Just like in B.A.S.S., the redfish anglers will find the concentrations of fish in practice and congregate around them in the event. That’s what has happened on Day 1, with several teams grouped up in close confines.
Tony Viator, teaming with Gary Moreno, figured this Winyah Bay event would fish small, especially after running into about every team in practice.
“I made a comment on Facebook yesterday, we have hundreds of thousands of acres to fish inside our boundaries,” Viator said, “and inevitable the majority of the redfish guys will end up in the same general areas.”
Only one angler, Charleston’s Ben Powers, is from the region, and Capt. Ryan Rickard has fished the area six or seven times. None of the others had ever been near Georgetown. To prepare, most searched for potential redfish haunts on GoogleEarth maps.
“They all probably did exactly what we did, started there and in practice went to places that looked good,” Viator said. “You start eliminating water, but there’s a problem with that.
“Here you can eliminate water and say it’s not going to work, but not realizing that six hours later it could be a good piece of water on a different tide.”
Moreno and Viator had one of the better practices of the 10 teams, posting photos of some nice slot fish on social media and raising the eyes of their competitors.
“You can’t win in practice,” Viator said. “There’s 20 people in this competition and I consider myself 20th ranked. These are real sticks. But I probably have the best attitude. To be honest, I probably have the best partner.”
Several of this week’s competitors have been in past Redfish Cups, leaving Viator to say he’s the “old, new guy.” The angler from Winnie, Texas, is the oldest at 62, but fish can’t tell. His experience proved helful as he and Moreno approached Winyah and its extreme tides with caution.
“We went in really slow on the first day, taking our time and not messing things up, i.e. the boat,” he said. “We found fish quick. It’s a good confidence booster.”
Asked a best-case scenario for his team, Viator said it was getting a quick start, which didn’t come into fruition.
“We stop at our first spot and we pick up two, maybe three fish,” he said. “We move to our second spot and, with any luck, the Mullet guys aren’t there.”
That would be the team of cousins, Ken and Jeff Mullet of Florida.
“Over three days, I think we’ve seen everyone except Krista and maybe one other team,” Viator said.
