re: HT Redfish Tournament - Houma, LA

Talked to Sean. Said they are in second pending a decision tomorrow. Supposedly a team claimed one of their fish to have an unnatural tail. WTF

I was wondering about that..

Saying they cut the tail, best thing to do is drop it on its nose.

As u guys know, I have fished HT for the past couple of years. One of the rules that HT has regarding a fish't tail is as follows:

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HT officials reserve the right to refuse any red fish deemed to have been altered,
(accidentally or intentionally) and/or damaged sufficiently to make determining the
exact length of the fish's overall tail non conclusive. Any tail without a clear tip of the
tail showing the longest natural point will be refused.

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This rule is pretty straight forward. If the tip @ the top of a fish's tail is missing or altered in any way whatsoever, the fish is not gonna be weighed. It doesn't matter whether or not the angler trimmed the tail with a knife to make it shorter or an alligator gar bit the fish on the tail. If it's messed up, it's no good.

Believe it or not, there are people in this world who would cheat & trim a tail in order to win $40,000. This rule is in place to protect the anglers against those who would try & trim a fish's tail in order to make it measure in the slot.

I also want to mention that @ the captains meetings the tournament director goes over this rule & makes sure that everyone has his cell phone #. If guys go out & catch a fish that has a questionable tail, they are encouraged to take a picture with their phone & text or email it to the tournament director for a ruling. They even allow temporarily holding a 3rd fish in your livewell until you can get a decision on a questionable fish. There is no real reason to get a fish kicked out for a bad tail when all you have to do is snap a pic & send it in for a decision.

Anyway, I talked to the tournament director a few minutes ago & he said that the fish in question was DQ'd. There wasn't a protest or anything, it just didn't have a good tip on the top of the tail that was the longest point. He said the results will be posted shortly. He just wanted to give the anglers the news 1st & let the rest of the field know what was going on this morning @ the launch rather than having everyone find out on the internet.

Tough break for Sean & Eddie, those are some great guys.

Damn, they had a fish DQ'd and still have 10.85 lbs.

yeah that really sucks for them but i really don't understand how they could have brought in a fish weighing 5.95 lbs with a bad tail. Fish that size are a dime a dozen anywhere between houma & venice. The only thing that I can think of is that if they did infact make the run to venice they would have had very little time to actually fish. They probably got all excited with that monster fish & knew all they needed was a 6 pound kicker to go with it & as soon as they caught one they hauled arse back to houma not realizing that the fish had a jacked up tail.

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He was scouting in his tower boat a few days ago and went over the Point barre road during high tide

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Like a boss.

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