Scherer, Friermood look for repeat, berth in Redfish Cup championship
"It won't be easy," Scherer said. "Only the top 15 teams qualify for the championship, and we're in 29th place, 95 points behind.
"These are the best redfish anglers in the world, and there's an awful lot at stake in this tournament," Friermood said, "so they're all going to be fishing hard. For us to win another one, we not only have to catch big fish all three days here, but also make sure we don't make any mistakes."
Despite that note of pessimism, Friermood also has confidence they can win again. Afterall, on his third cast of the day on Wednesday he caught a redfish over eight pounds. A veteran guide who fishes the Port Arthur area often, he and Scherer plan to target shell beds just like they did in Kemah.
"There are some differences in what we're fishing here and what we did at Kemah," Scherer said. "There we had about half a mile of old oyster beds where we fished 3/8-oz. football jigs with Berkley Gulp! plastics in eight to 10 feet of water. We didn't catch many fish, but the six we did bring in averaged more than eight pounds.
"Here, we're also targeting big fish on shell beds, but these are living oysters, so we can't just drag our jigs along the bottom because we'll never get them back. We're also fishing ridges and troughs, whereas at Kemah the bottom was flat."
Friermood and Scherer are trailing Western Division leaders Dwayne Lowery and Carter Hooper, both of whom are also experienced Texas coastal redfish pros. They're only 45 points behind the 15th place team, however.
"At Kemah, we had four 'perfect' redfish," Scherer said. "The Texas size limit is 28 inches, and we weighed in four fish that measured more than 27 ½ inches and weighed over nine pounds.
"This Port Arthur area has plenty of fish just like that, and judging from the fish Blaien caught in practice, we may have found some of them.
"Afterall, we only need six redfish total, over three days."
While Scherer and Friermood will likely remain reasonably close to the launch and weigh-in at Pleasure Island Marina, some, like Dr. Tommy Lomonte, plan to make the 50-mile run via the Intracoastal Waterway to Galveston. Others, like Cajun Phil Broussard and his son Kevin, plan to run east to Louisiana.
Still others, like Mike Frenette and his son Michael, who guide in the famous, fish-rich waters near Venice, La., still haven't decided where they're going to start.
"It could be Galveston or it could be Venice, or it might even be right here," Frenette said. "I'm not kidding. There are quality fish in all three areas, and I probably won't decide where we're going until I crank the boat engine in the morning."
For Scherer and Friermood, however, the where-to-fish question has been settled. The problem they face is practically being forced to catch big redfish just to qualify for the year-end championship.
