Luck o’ the redfish

Ramzinksy-Adams pound another 17 at Rockport, take strong lead into finals

ROCKPORT, Texas – It’s St. Patrick’s Day, but few fans and fellow anglers at the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series weigh-in Friday afternoon believed it took a whole lot of luck for Tommy Ramzinsky and Todd Adams to nail their second 17-pound stringer in a row.

But that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.

The local anglers – Ramzinsky is from Rockport and Adams hails from adjacent Fulton, Texas – took their 2-pound lead from day one and extended it on day two to a seemingly insurmountable 3 1/2 pounds heading into Saturday’s top-five finals. The leaders caught a two-redfish limit weighing 17-6 Thursday and followed it up Friday with a limit weighing 17-0. They closed out the two-day opening round with a head-turning total weight of 34-6.

The leaders approached day two much the same as they did day one. They headed north to their fishing location in the San Antonio Bay area and worked the same horseshoe-shaped pocket that coughed up more than 17 pounds the first day. They fished there for roughly an hour and a half, and then moved on to let their fish rest.

“We had about 11 or 12 pounds when we moved, which is what we were after coming into today. Then we caught a few more and culled out to 17,” Ramzinsky said. “We caught them late yesterday, and we caught them late again today.”

“There’s no trick to it,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of luck involved.”

Still, they admitted that their honey hole is the main reason behind their success. The pocket they’re fishing is prime redfish country, with mud, shell and grass. They said they’re catching all their fish on D.O.A. Shad Tails in 3 to 3 1/2 feet of water, but the key is the area.

“We’re just on a school of big fish,” Ramzinsky said. “It’s not a huge school, but there’s a nice concentration of them in this pocket. I think they’re just out there deep, and they’ll just pull up on this thing to feed.”

They caught some 20 to 25 fish Friday, strong numbers which tend to lend themselves more easily to weighing in 17-pound stringers. Ramzinsky and Adams – who won the 2005 FLW Redfish Championship in October – are understandably rolling with a lot of confidence at the moment. Given that and the big fish they’re on, that will make them tough to beat.

“Coming off the championship, we worked really hard coming into this one,” Ramzinsky said. “We prefished every day that we weren’t working.”

“When it’s your turn, it’s your turn,” Adams said.

Team Walter in second

The father-son team of Darrell and Robert Walter of Rockport landed a solid 16-pound limit Friday and made the cut in second place with 30-14.

“It was another great day,” Darrell Walter said. “The tide dropped out some, but it really didn’t play a part because we caught our fish early.”

The wind changed Friday, too, coming more out of the northeast than the southeast. That pushed baitfish around and relocated the Walters’ redfish to opposite banks on the cove they were fishing.

“We just anchored up and made long casts with the bank,” Robert Walter said. “Really, our key was to cover a lot of water.”

The Walters threw Berkley Gulp shrimp most of the day.

“We didn’t catch as many today as we did yesterday, but we had both of our keeper fish by 11 o’clock,” Darrell Walter said.

Snopek-Watts third

Steve Snopek of New Braunsfeld, Texas, and Glen Watts of Corpus Christi, Texas, qualified for the finals in third place with a two-day total of 28 pounds even.

“The wind was different today, but we just kind of stayed on a similar pattern,” Watts said, adding that they threw plastics and jerkbaits. “We fished the same areas and threw similar baits.”

One unique factor that seemed to help them, Watts said, was the timing of this event. It’s spring break in the Coastal Bend area of Texas, and that means a lot of recreational boats are churning the water up and down the coast.

“The spring breakers seem to spook the fish up to us,” Snopek said.

“That’s right,” added Watts. “We’re running the `spring break’ pattern. We’re looking for bikinis and boats.”

Alexander-Thompson fourth, Koliba-Shimek fifth

James Alexander and Kenny Thompson, both of Aransas Pass, Texas, grabbed the fifth qualifying position with a two-day weight of 26 pounds, 15 ounces.

Kurt Koliba of Port Lavaca, Texas, and Michael Shimek of Bay City, Texas, grabbed the fifth and final qualifying spot with an opening-round weight of 26 pounds, 14 ounces.

“We’re fishing a backwater marsh in 2 or 3 feet of water with a lot of grass,” Shimek said. “When the tide gets up, that’s when we can get back in there.”

Shimek said they caught the bulk of their fish Friday on spoons and flats minnows.

“We also caught a few on topwaters today,” he said. “They bit on topwaters better than they have been.”

Top-five final round Saturday

Saturday’s top-five final round begins at 6:30 a.m. Central time at Rockport Beach Park in Rockport. Each team’s weights from days one and two will carry over into tomorrow, and the winners will be decided by combined three-day weight.