Event: 2021 Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter
Scenario: The inaugural chapter in what has become a celebrated annual competition took place in Port Aransas, the Gulf Coast town known as the Fishing Capital of Texas. The invitational event featured a unique format with half a dozen two-person teams comprising one Bassmaster pro and one redfish tournament pro, plus four purely redfish pro teams.
Zaldain paired with veteran IFA Redfish Tour angler Ryan Rickard and the two instantly meshed with mutual respect for proven ability and an infectious passion for competition. This chemistry would play a significant role in keeping Zaldain and Rickard in the hunt and ultimately raising the trophy.
“As the first annual, it was fresh and brand new,” said Zaldain, who grew up in San Jose, Calif., before relocating to the Lone Star State. “Having lived in Texas since 2011, I knew how crazy Texans are for fishing. In that lower quarter, the fans are crazy about redfishing.”
In addition to understanding the angling culture, Zaldain’s many years of bass fishing had cemented a cautious regard for a major Gulf Coast factor — the wind.
“Being near the Gulf, you have those really strong south winds and much like our Bassmaster Elite tournaments on Lake St. Clair and the St. Lawrence River, wind was a huge thing that we’d have to be aware of,” Zaldain said. “One day of practice, and one of the tournament days, it blew 25-plus out of the South, so that went into our game plan.”
Formulating a strategy that provided access to the system’s prime redfish feeding areas within a reasonable run from the Port-A takeoff, Zaldain and Rickard committed their event to a shallow Laguna Madre flat on the west side of Padre Island. Fishing about a mile and a half south of the Highway 358 Bridge, they focused on three semi-protected areas with a mix of grass and sandy depressions known as “potholes.”
“We found that the redfish were relating to shallow, clear-water grass flats,” Zaldain said. “It reminded me of fishing those grass holes on Lake Okeechobee, where you have thick, thick grass and then all of a sudden, there’s sand holes the size of a 24-foot bay boat. Once we established that, we looked for the most protected area where we could keep the trolling motor in the water.
“We stayed within a 1/2- to 3/4-mile area that was just 200 yards from the main channel. The redfish use that channel to migrate, so we had new fish coming in every day.”
Following a foundational bass fishing premise — find the bait, find the fish — Zaldain and Rickard locked onto their main area largely because of the vast food supply.
“What kept us there was the presence of pinfish, which are the saltwater equivalent of bluegill, along with the gizzard shad equivalent, which is mullet,” Zaldain said. “We kept seeing this forage and that kept us in that area.”
When fish moved onto the flats with rising water, they were looking for any crustacean or finfish meal they could find. However, mullet is a major factor in redfish pursuits.
For one thing, mullet are vegetarians, so while they have no interest in the forage they displace, the school’s movement commonly attracts opportunistic redfish intent on gobbling the easy meals. Additionally, mullet schools comprise different size fish, and a big redfish has no problem gobbling a decent size mullet — a point relevant to Zaldain’s final-round bait choice.
The decision: Zaldain and Rickard caught their first two days’ fish on weedless gold spoons and 4-inch paddletails on 3/16-ounce belly-weighted hooks. Enhancing the lures with baitfish-scented Pro-Cure Super Gel helped tempt more bites, while the terminal tackle helped with habitat management.
“The key was the belly-weighted hooks,” Zaldain said. “A lot of the anglers were using light jig heads with exposed hooks, but there was too much floating grass in our area for that presentation.
“We kept the wind at our back and (the boat anchored) and there were these perfect 5-foot lanes between seams of floating grass that would foul up any bait.”
While the winners nabbed their best two final-round fish on paddletails, Zaldain reached into his bag of bass tricks — specifically the one where you throw a big bait to get ‘em looking in the right direction before closing the deal with a smaller presentation — to tap into the big-fish potential.
For this, he threw a 6-inch Megabas Magdraft Freestyle in the white back shad color rigged on a 1/8-ounce, 7/0 Trokar belly-weighted hook.
While the smaller baits ultimately delivered Zaldain and Rickard’s biggest Day 3 reds, Zaldain caught several high-slot reds that culled up their advancing limit and wowed the Bassmaster LIVE audience with an absolute copper brute that measured just over the 28-inch length limit.
The right call: The other key decision involved site selection, specifically, believing in the area that produced a Day 1 limit of 14 pounds, 10 ounces and put Zaldain and Rickard atop the leaderboard. Day 2 got weird, as a weather change rattled their fish and yielded only 11-5.
Sitting just 1 3/4 pounds off the lead, Zaldain and Rickard knew they were well within striking distance, but their second-round disappointment had them considering other options. A backup spot would likely offer plenty of opportunity to catch “good” fish, but after a gut check following the Day 2 weigh-ins, the teammates went all-in with their main area.
That turned out to be a critical call, as Zaldain and Rickard turned in the tournament’s most amazing day of redfish smackdown. With a final-round weight of 17-5, the event’s second-heaviest (behind former Elite pro Derek Hudnall and IFA Redfish Tour pro Ron Hueston’s 18-3), the winners tallied a three-day total of 43-4, with 2-12 winning margin.
“I think we caught like 40 fish,” Zaldain said. “The signs weren’t right (on Day 2) and we only caught two fish. On the final day, we got into our area and Ryan said, ‘Dude, look at all the mullet on the horizon.’
“There were mullet jumping and baitfish everywhere. Things started happening and we went through one fish after another. I think we released like 10 7-pounders and four 8s.”
Game changer: Notwithstanding his confidence in the big swimbait, Zaldain said he had no reservations about trusting Rickard’s proven redfish prowess. Solid in his general fishing skill sets, he knew that applying his abilities to the path chosen by a seasoned saltwater pro was the best use of what he brought to the table.
“I understood that I was a co-angler and this isn’t my world,” Zaldain said. “Ryan actually is a captain, he has his Captain’s License, so when the captain says, ‘I think we need to check this area,’ or ‘I think we need to stay in this area,’ I didn’t fight back.
“When he would say something, I would soak it all in and just complement that with bait changes. That was a very cool dynamic. There has to be a captain of the ship and a helper. The help I provided was putting bigger-than-normal fish in the boat by throwing bigger-than-normal baits.”
Takeaway: Unfortunately, in redfish tournaments, there is such a thing as “too big.” Even though Zaldain had to release a couple of whoppers that wouldn’t make the cut, he was delighted to see his “go big or go home” style translate from the bass world to that of the redfish.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re targeting, big fish eat little fish and the big fish get eaten by even bigger fish, so when you introduce a swimbait into a world where the predators are not used to it, they can’t resist it,” Zaldain said of the big bites that made for good TV. “They bit it like they wanted to steal it off your line every single time.
“A redfish naturally tries to tear the rod out of your hand, but it was tenfold with that swimbait. Let’s face it, with a 6- to 7-inch mullet, they gotta chase that thing down and gulp it down in one shot.”
