Between the RED TIDE

By: Ritchie Zacker

Over here on the west coast of Florida we had one of the worst summer's ever with the secord worst case of red tide known.

Five months of dead fish out to thirty miles will drive a man to go anywhere to find some fish. Myself and a few friends did just that: In mid july we decided to do a road trip up to Jacksonville, Fl over on the upper east coast and try our luck there. We ran out to some wrecks in 90 to 100ft and started working them. On the first couple of spots we shot some nice mangrove snapper up to 12 lbs and red snapper up to 19 lbs but when we hit this one spot I noticed a large school of atlantic spadefish swimming at about 60 ft in the column. I did a drop to see if anything was hanging with them and noticed this one spadefish looked huge to me. I swung my 130cm carbon apex on it and let it fly right behind the head. I brought it to the surface and was amazed on how large it was. My buddies were like dude, thats got to be some sort of record. After returning home and finding out that there was no record for one. I went and got it weighed on a certified scale and it weighed in at 11.2 lbs. My first ever world record.

 A month and a half later we decided to do another trip back to the east coast except this time off Daytona Beach, Fl which is about in the middle of the state. It was early september and we heard that the viz had been really bad but when we arrived to our spot we were amazed to see that we had top to bottom viz from the boat in 80 ft. We started doing drops seeing lots of nice mangrove snapper up to 12 lbs and other assorted reef fish. It was early in the day when I did this one drop looking for a big snapper when I was about to come up when I noticed this very large atlantic sheepshead. I quickly aimed my 130cm carbon apex at it knowing that I was at the end of my drop I knew that I had to make it count. I put its lights out with a kill shot. When I returned to the boat I knew that it was my biggest ever but had no idea that it would turn out to be a world record. When we put it on the cerified scale it weighed 13.3 lbs and beat the prevous record by half a pound. Alright!!! Two world records in one summer. Both records taken down with a sweet 130cm carbon apex. What else can I say about that gun.