Great fishiing day, crappy tournament day

Launched at exactly legal light and caught my first legal trout (16 1/2") on the second cast on topwater. That'd  bode well for fishing, but I needed them a tad bigger to make it up to the podium. That was the start.... and end of my Hobie IFA tournament day.

 Caught a half dozen more fat clones of that fish in the next 20 minutes trying to work to the edge of the school and find their parents. Nothing doing.  Moved along and found the one red of the day. It was about 17" and had to be a legal 18" to count.  The rest of the morning went about like that and I think I boated a couple of dozen nice fat trout, but none more than 19".

Normally, I'd rank that as a pretty dang good morning (day!), but I had to be off the water by 11:00 to make it back to Savanna. I was actually almost mad when I knew I had just another fish on, almost horsing them in to get them off my line. That's just dumb and note that I said "almost".
 
Too heck with tournament fishing.

 Well, almost

I guess you can't win them all! Cool pictures. What were the rules of the tournament? Was it based on weight or length?

The winner is determined by the total length of the red and the trout. Just to add insult to injury, I looked at the final results. My total length would have given me fourth place IF my redfish was legal.

Sent from my C771 using Tapatalk

The winner is determined by the total length of the red and the trout. Just to add insult to injury, I looked at the final results. My total length would have given me fourth place IF my redfish was legal.

Sent from my C771 using Tapatalk

Well at least you caught some nice fish.

Definitely a great day of fishing. Much better than a redfish that was 18" short

That beat work any day.