I was one of the lucky guides that has fished this great event for the Pediatric Cancer Foundation for 14 years and have meet some great people that are very generous with their donations to pay to go fish this great 2 day Grand Slam Celebrity Tournament but this year at the Fisherman’s Ball Friday night one of the sponsors that has been with this tournament for 5 years now. I have seen a lot of big things happen but nothing like this Matt from Tires Plus went up on stage and handed the Pediatric Cancer Foundation a check for $228,000.00 dollars from the employees and the round up program for their customer’s that round up their purchases to the nearest dollar. I just wanted to say thank you to the Tire Plus.
Steve from Tires Plus with a Redfish
Shannon from Tires Plus with a Redfish
Day One of the tournament I had the pleasure of fishing Steve and Shannon from Tires Plus and my celebrity was Sheli Sanders the announcer for the PTTS. We had a shotgun start out of the Viony Resort and off we went to Weedon Island to get are Snook on a very slow outgoing tide and the first one to strike was Shannon with a 27 inch Snook on a sardine. The next one was Steve with a nice 25 inch Snook and we caught a few more Snook and things slowed down so we moved to a new spot to try for some Redfish and what did we find a 28 inch Snook for Sheli and Steve got one more Snook but no Redfish. So the tide finally started to move out good so we went to the last spot before we had to get back for the weigh in. As we started working the shore line and in the last 5 mins before we had to leave Steve hits a Trout and a good Redfish to finish of his slam and then when we were drifting out Sheli hits a 23 inch Red and off we went to the weigh in where we turned in the score cards for Saturday.
Sheli Sanders with a big Snook
Day Two of the tournament I had the same people and all we need was 2 Trout and upgrade are 3 Redfish. I had a spot picked out with the low tide in the morning we poled up to the spot and waited for the Redfish and flipper shows up and the Reds humped up and got off the flat so we are off to find a bigger Snook will that didn’t work so we went out and drifted the flat in 2 to 3 feet of water and the first drift Shannon hooks a giant Trout around 25 inches and gets it up to the boat and the hook pulls I was sick. I went back up and started a new drift and Steve and Sheli picked up a few nice 19 inch Trout then a few minutes’ later Shannon gets a 18 inch Trout and we get a few more Trout and time was running out so we headed back to the weigh in and see how we ended up. It ended up we were 4th 5th and 6th out of 43 boats. I had a great time with Steve, Shannon and Sheli and the best thing was that the kids are the real winners and thanks again to Tires Plus for their donation.
Sheli Sanders with a nice Redfish
Capt. Jim Lemke
813 917 4989
