History’s repeating itself on Championship Sunday of the Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter at Port Aransas, Texas, but this field of seasoned redfish pros and highly-skilled Bassmaster Elite anglers are up for the challenge.
Reminiscent of the final day of the 2025 event, also held at Port-A, when a storm system’s brutal winds lashed the fishery, this year’s field launched with the understanding that they will not see a Chamber of Commerce kinda day.
At takeoff, the weather forecast, as well as a simple eyeball outlook, showed a significant storm system bearing down on the Texas coast. Heavy rains and thunderstorms will pummel the area most of the day, but as long as lightning does not present a safety issue, anglers at this level have been soaked enough times to trust the foul weather gear and shrug off the meteorological annoyance.
Wind, however, will present a more significant consideration. By comparison, the final day of last year’s event brought 25- to 35-knot northeast winds, while today’s forecast looks more like 15-20 out of the southeast.
According to Clark Jordan, who along with Bassmaster Elite Easton Fothergill, topped the Day-2 leaderboard, 20 or less is doable. And if you’re wondering if redfish bite in the rain, the leaders boated one nearly 6 pounds around 8:20 this morning in a straight-up deck washing downpour.
Based on storm movement, the southern end of the tournament playing field where Jordan and Fothergill, along with second-place Mike Lauer and Jesse Craddock are fishing may see rainfall intensity diminish later in the day, while areas north of Port Aransas enjoyed a couple hours of dry conditions before their rains began.
Rainy days definitely require more focus and perseverance, but windy conditions bring more tactical considerations into the conversation. Here’s a handful of relevant points.
Clarity: Wind stirs bottom sediment and, while reds are used to nosing around in the mud, you gotta make sure they see your bait. For example, we saw Jordan using a black Berkley Ripple Mullet with a chartreuse tail toward the end of Day 2, but with Day 3’s lower visibility, he started with that sharply contrasting bait.
Sound also helps and a couple of anglers broke out the popping cork rigs for Day 3. With a lure suspended below the float, anglers will snap their rod tip to chug the cork and move its rattle beads. This commotion attracts redfish attention and when they investigate the sound, they find a vulnerable bait dangling below.
Boat Control: Wind moves a boat with greater stealth than a trolling motor, so harnessing nature’s power makes sense. Angling the big motor turns the boat broadside to the wind for a more controlled progression. This also allows two anglers more room to cast, as opposed to crowding the bow with the wind astern.
Father-son team Fred and Carter Myers employed a drift sock to properly angle their boat and slow their drift while working shallow shorelines. As Fred Myers pointed out, controlling your drift speed allows you to properly present a bait on a long cast, as opposed to rapidly reeling just to keep up when the boat moves too fast.
Also, as guest commentator Capt. Rick Murphy pointed out, waves slapping the back of a boat can spook fish, while the angled or broadside alignment minimizes wave noise.
Go With the Flow — Strategically
Wind often requires relocation, but that can lead to better opportunities. On Day 2, Lauer and Craddock tried to fish the west side of spoil islands along the Intracoastal Waterway, as they did on Day 1, but when a strong east wind pushed them off their target zone, the Florida redfish pros made an adjustment that worked in their favor.
“We adapted to a grass flat and expanded and picked up a new little area that was pretty good,” Lauer said. “That area produced one of the fish we weighed in and we saw another good one, so we’re excited about that.”
On a related note, rough conditions will limit local traffic. Tournament anglers share the waters with all user groups, but when rain and wind clear the playing field, competitors can fish as they need to.
“I love that other people are out there fishing, we just work around them,” Craddock said of the adjustments his team had to make for local anglers the first two days. “Not to be greedy, but having it to ourselves could allow us to work it a little slower and capitalize on a few of those bigger bites.”
Seize the Moment
Regardless of weather conditions, fish still gotta eat, especially the notoriously gluttonous redfish. Fothergill said that both days he and Jordan saw mid-morning spikes in redfish activity. Today’s conditions may impact when the windows of opportunity open, but one truth remains constant: luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation.
Fothergill said: “If we see a bite window open up (today), we’ll just have to make sure we capitalize on it and get all the bites we can.”
