In Good Company

So yeah, I've been slacking on putting up a new post... my apologies.  The downward spiral was hard to pull out of until recently.  I've put in 5 trips for cobia this year, all with chum, eels, etc.  I've seen more cobia from my kayak this year than any previous year, but the brown clown still eludes me.  I've also had a few recent trips for bull reds, catfish, croaker, spot, and smallmouth but again, they all had the heebeegeebees like some saboteur hid a banana in my kayak.  To make things worse, Lumbergh just upgraded the chains on my office chair so sneaking out for those perfect weather windows just got tougher.

Ok.  Enough bitching.  

I helped my buddy William Ragulsky land a 61lb citation cobia and put the hammer to the dome.

I've also been enjoying the new Predator MX on the James River.

Full review to come later.

Spent some time with her royal wifeyness…

And at the 2013 TKAA tournament, I got to enjoy the company of many great friends and met a lot of new faces.  To those of you who had so many nice things to say about my posts, photos, and videos, I can not thank you enough.  I deeply appreciate it, as it puts a lot into perspective for me.  I hope to continue to provide the kind of content that you all enjoy.

As far as tournament fishing goes, the last two years I helped out with HOW, so this year decided to catch up with a great friend that I don't get to fish with as often as I would like.  

Photo credit: Kayak Kevin Whitley

The wind was brutal, so we tucked ourselves into a creek and got into a good number of little reds.

I almost forgot how fun those little reds can be, especially when you're sight casting to them in less than a foot of water.  

Basic white curly tail grubs on 1/4oz jighead

Did a little exploring and found a turtle skeleton.  Remains were about 2 feet long.

Reed Heckert of Bethesda, MD won the redfish print I donated to the raffle

After it was all said and done, our biggest reds (21.5" and 20") didn't place in the tournament.  But to be honest, I wasn't the least bit disappointed.  

Between all the people at the weigh-in and getting to fish with Kayak Kevin,

 on his birthday at that, 

it was really nice just to take it easy in good company.