Two record red drum, scads of speckled trout and hundreds of other fish and fishermen passed under the new Dr. Bob Shipp weigh station during a busy opening day of the 80th Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo Friday. Carson Tierce’s 6.45-pound fish set the new record for slot red drum, commonly called redfish, when the scales closed since this is the first year the category was added to the rodeo’s 30-fish slate on the leaderboard.
Grady Gunn (6.21) is second and Nancy Ann Vaughn (5.97) is third in the new category.
If the number of slot reds coming across the scales on the rodeo’s first day is any indication, said Assistant Judge Dr. Sean Powers, fishermen appear to like its introduction to the leaderboard.
Powers also wanted to remind fishermen thinking of bringing in a slot redfish that rodeo rules require that judges measure its total length, which means its tail will be pinched.
A tail pinch didn’t matter to Al Mead when he laid his redfish on the weigh station table. He knew it wouldn’t be within Alabama’s 16- to 26-inch slot limit as rodeo rules required.
It was nearly 2 feet longer.
That length plus an equally impressive girth helped it tip the scales to 45.60 pounds, becoming the pending new Alabama state record for red drum. The fish eclipsed the old record of 45.25 pounds held by Eric Easley since August 2007.
Mead and his sons Clayton Mead and Blake Mead had brought a couple of other fish to the scales before asking rodeo judges if they could weigh the monster on the tournament’s certified scales.
Mead said his pending state record came from the same general area on the lower Mobile River where Easley landed his fish. Read more….