The Space Coast Bass Finatics brought their monthly team tournament trail to the Miami-Garcia Impoundment on November 16th. Santos "Junior" Solis of Vero Beach, fishing in his first tournament with the club and without a partner, bested the 19 boat field with 5 fish for 23.42 pounds. He set the all-time club record for one day total weigh for a solo competitor. He also caught a 7.22 pound lunker that was the tournament's biggest fish. Crankbaits early and flipping the rest of the day caught his winning weight with the early crankbait bite producing the bigger fish.
Mike Hampton of Malabar and Charlie Coleman of Sebastian flipped junebug colored soft plastics to amass 5 fish for 20.25 pounds earning a second place finish. Dwayne Haga of Sanford and Dave Metzler of Debary also flipped junebug colored soft plastics to total 5 fish for 16.49 pounds to round out the top 3.
David Lloyd and Bill Groseclose earned themselves this month's small creel award with 1 fish for 1.59 pounds. The prize was 2 bags of fishing stuff including baits, sunglass lanyards, and other useful items. It was sponsored by Dwayne's wife Elizabeth who encourages you to download the free Paid2Save app on iPhone or Android phones and enter referral code 42215. The app helps you find sales and discounts at your favorite stores including Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Sears, Sports Authority, and many others. For more information on that you can call Elizabeth at 321-591-9847. Thanks Elizabeth!
There was an unfortunate incident involving a canoe in the E canal about the time our weigh-in started.
The canoe was traveling N in the E canal between 3:00 and 3:30 when a bass boat with a single occupant came down the E canal traveling S to the boat ramp. Despite efforts from the canoe to wave them to slow down, said bass boat did not come off plane and slowly pass the canoe as it should have. The boat's occupant instead waved as he went by at approximately 60mph. This resulted in the canoe being wake flipped dumping the two occupants into the water with their rods & reels, a new battery, and other equipment. Fortunately, the canoe occupants were able to get themselves back into the boat and get their motor dried out and restarted and made it back to the boat ramp. They even went back out there on Monday jumped into the canal and recovered most of their expensive equipment. This incident could have easily resulted in a fatality. We bass boaters need to be mindful of smaller craft especially at Garcia where there are more of them, they are harder to see, and they often share the same confined spaces with bigger boats.
I witnessed a gray bass boat with a single occupant arrive at the boat ramp at exactly 3:10pm. I know this because I was sitting in the water still waiting to trailer my boat and looking at the clock ready to penalize the boat for being late. It turns out the gray boat was not fishing with our club so I didn't give it further thought until I heard about the canoe incident. It is very likely that this gray boat was responsible for wake flipping the canoe. The driver of said boat probably has no idea he did that to the canoe. Our first few teams to weigh-in probably went down to the boat ramp to release their fish at the time the gray boat was trailering. If you saw the gray boat please contact me so we can figure out who it was so we can have a word with him before he winds up killing someone.
If you don't count the canoe incident or a parking lot accident involving a parked trailer and a backing up truck that resulted in lots of plastic bits of lights from Mike Calloway's trailer on the pavement, Garcia manged to not destroy anyone's equipment that I'm aware of.
The area west of the pit seemed to be the most productive area during this tournament.
Air Temperature: lower 50s to upper 70s
Water Temperature: mid 70s
Conditions: clam and sunny early with a SE wind 5-10 late
The winners reported catching their fish using the following tricks:
- 1st Place & Big Bass: some kind of crankbait early followed by flipping something
- 2nd Place: flipping some kind of junebug colored soft plastics
- 3rd Place: flipping some kind of junebug colored soft plastics
