APALACHICOLA, Fla. – They are out there, the 7-pound class redfish, although no team has landed one in the Bassmaster Yamaha Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter.
Yet.
If someone does, it can shake up the leaderboard.
Defending Redfish Cup champion Fred Myers and Cody Chivas stood second after Day 1, just 4 ounces behind Ryan Rickard and Patrick Marsonek.
“They live here,” Myers said of 7-pounders. “Carter (his son) landed a 7 ½ in practice. He lost a good one yesterday. The fish where we’re at are short and fat.
“It’s the same for everybody. If you want to catch that kind of fish, you have to be around them. We’re around them.”
Rickard, who teamed with Elite Series pro Chris Zaldain to win this event in 2021, knows that class of fish can turn the standings upside down. Yet he’s happy he and Marsonek went over their double-digit goal with 11 pounds, 4 ounces on Day 1.
“Four ounces isn’t much of a lead,” he said. “But we’ll take where we’re sitting weight-wise. Ten pounds is where we needed to be. We’ve been saying 30 pounds to win.
“We exceeded it by almost a pound and half. With what we saw, I felt that’s like a good number. We would be good with 10 pounds today.”
While the team isn’t on a school, Marsonek said he thinks they’re around the potential winning fish.
“We caught some 25 ¼ inch fish that weighed 6 ½ pounds,” he said. “We’re in the right area. With the tides changing, we just got to find where they want to be.”
Marsonek lost one yesterday that Rickard thought would be close to 7 pounds, which would make a huge difference this week. He’d take a 7 to go with 5 all day, but he knows any team could climb from the depths on Day 2.
“If somebody catches two 7-pluses, they’re going to separate themselves from the field,” he said. “It’s possible. Not likely, but it’s possible.”
The team of Chris Cenci and Elite Brandon Palaniuk led much of Day 1 before settling into fourth with 9-6.
“We have the same game plan,” Cenci said. “We lost a couple of nice fish yesterday. I think today will be about the same. We’ve just got to fish a lot cleaner.”
The team’s 5-14 was behind Rickard/Marsonek’s 6-4 for biggest fish, but a slightly bigger one that escaped due to frayed braided line would have given them close to 12 pounds. A 7 is about the biggest fish Cenci has seen, and he expects today’s tides to hinder fishing.
“The tides are moving a lot slower,” he said. “The more movement we have, it triggers the bite. The more slack, no bite. Each day is getting a little worse.”
Myers and Chivas caught their two best fish in the final hour, a pair of 5-pound fish. Myers said he expects another late bite, also dependent on tide.
“We got to wait on the tide a little bit. We caught our two at the end of the day,” he said. “We caught them pretty much back to back. We know where they’re sitting. It’s a tidal thing, so we’ll be waiting on them to set up.”
Michael Frenette and Mark Robinson started Day 2 in third place with 10-2, but they broke the ice with a 7-4 early on Day 2. It helped them to the day’s best 10-9 and the lead with 20-9.
“I don’t think we do anything different gameplan-wise,” Frenette said. “We might move an hour earlier. We think our second spot is better and we might have gotten there too late yesterday.”
Frenette, from Louisiana, said he’s still trying to decipher what it will take to win. He was asked if the team has a target weight.
“You do and you don’t,” he said. “No. 1, we’re not from here, so you don’t know exactly what fish will win. We got an idea that 13 pounds, 13 ½, is about as big as anybody can catch.”
Coming into the event, Frenette thought it might take 12 pounds a day to win, but he’s lowered that to 11. Many, like Rickard, thought 10 a day could take the title.
“I think 10 is pretty good as well,” Frenette said, “but I don’t know if it’s good enough to win.”
