Guided Mr. Randy Hamilton, Director of Marketing, Advertising and Website operations at Redfish University, this morning for few hours(530am-730am) to get him on the water and to check some areas for speckled trout and redfish. We saw the same huge alligator today and got some more photos. Before we got started, we decided to have a friendly tournament this morning with the loser buying lunch and a few rounds of posh, dark pints. Randy is an excellent angler and nearly as insanely competitive as I am so I knew he would work hard and produce lots of fish. Started with identical topwater baits, rods, reels, line and leader. We immediately started pounding quality trout. Randy got the first and it went to 5-all in no time. Then I hit a slump as Randy quickly jumped to a 12-6 lead. Suddenly, I hear and feel quite a commotion from the back of the boat and some strange gibberish that I couldn’t make out. He was pointing to something in the water and talking in tongues when suddenly, he leaps into the waist deep water. Of course, Im trying to figure out what the hell is going on and if he was feeling ill, stung by hundreds of bees or if the little flies were just getting to him. He frantically pops out of the water with my Oakley Scalpel sunglasses in his hand that he apparently dropped in the water. I told him, good God man!, you could have just let them go, I have several more pairs just for that reason!! Anyway, ooohh how we laugh and carried on after that little episode. I’m really glad there wasn’t anyone around to see or hear that! What made it even more funny was the fact that Randy never caught another fish after jumping in the water. Bananas vs. jumping in the water, I wonder… Since he ruined the small area, we took off for the last spot and switched to Gulp! Jerkshads and Shrimp which was going to be absolute game-over for Senor Hamilton. Went on a 15-0 run of redfish and nice speckled trout while Randy stood dripping on the deck. I gotta get some trash-talk in as I know Randy will be reading this very soon if not already. Interestingly, Randy refused to jump in the water when I dropped a bag of cashews near the alligator. Weird.. A great time this morning with a great friend, great angler and an huge asset to Redfish University. Finally score: Eric Holstman 21/Randy Hamilton 12. 31 Trout between 1-3.5# and 2 Redfish. Not a bad few hours of fishing! Honestly, we would have gotten over 50-60 fish if all the fish would have found the hooks on the topwaters. Oh well, that’s topwaters for ya. VIP trips this week with Pure Fishing/Berkley/Wal-Mart execs from Bentonville and Yamaha reps. later, so big pressure and we will be on our A-game! E Holstman
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