Elite Redfish Series coming to Morgan City next weekend

Morgan City will be the host city when the Elite Redfish Tournament Series event comes to town July 12-13.
The upcoming tournament will be the second leg of the Check-it Stick Team Tournament division, where anglers compete for cash, prizes and points for an opportunity to fish in the Tidewater Team Championship on South Padre Island, Texas, Oct. 4-5-6.
The July event in Morgan City is one of three tournaments on the team series schedule. The first event was held in Slidell in April and the third is scheduled for Port Lavaca, Texas, Aug. 30-31.
“In this event, we limit the field size, and we’re hoping to get pretty close to that 50-team mark of 100 anglers and come in here and have a really good showing for our first time in Morgan City,” said Pat Malone, host, emcee and producer of the Elite Redfish Tournament and Television Series.
One of the tournament’s partners for the local event is Cajun Coast Visitors & Convention Bureau. The Cajun Coast has had previous experience hosting major fishing events in years past like the FLW, BASS MASTERS and more recently, the Bass Nation High School State Tournament.
“We have certain goals, and one of them is to try and fill the hotels,” Cajun Coast Executive Director Carrie Stansbury said. “Usually, fishermen coming into the area for an event also have practice days prior, so these tournaments help to fill some of those rooms and help the local economy.”
One of the things the Elite Redfish Tournament Series brings to the table is Discovery Channel programming. Malone says more than 93 million homes will have an opportunity to watch the series when it airs on television in the fall.
“The Discovery Channel reaches across the country and the world,” Malone said. “We hope to get just a small fraction of that. We can make a pretty large economic impact for the area without doing any environmental damage, so that’s always our goal. We try to bring as much money as we can by bringing our anglers, who are all staying in hotels for the event and also while practicing, where they’re buying fuel, food and all that stuff.”
“When we show the series during the fourth quarter of the year and first quarter of the following year, when there’s snow over 80 percent of the country,” Malone continued, “we’re showing them a place they can plan to go. They can come to a place like Morgan City and have a good time, good weather, good fishing and good food, too.”
Like BASS MASTERS, there are recognizable names on the Elite Redfish Tournament Series, according to Malone, like Kevin Broussard and Bill Broussard, Mike Frenette and his son Michael Frenette, and Dwayne Eschete, who is one of the Elite Redfish tour’s top money earners during the past 5 years.
Mike Frenette teamed with BASS MASTERS ELITE angler Shaw Grigsby, a household name when it comes to bass fishing, at last year’s Battle on The Boardwalk Check-it Stick tournament in Kemah, Texas.
One of the concerns tournament organizers have had leading up to next week’s event has been the local flood waters.
“We initially thought we might have to cancel the tournament, but once they decided not to open the Morganza Spillway, we’ve been monitoring it closely,” Stansbury said. “There was concerns that with all of the high water the landings would be unsafe, making it difficult to launch. There are a couple local guys, Bradley Matte and Bubba Corbin, who fish the tournament and have been watching the water for us and volunteered to pressure wash the landings to help make sure no one will slip and hurt themselves.”
Malone says though sign ups were slow initially, as the tournament approaches and the water conditions have stabilized, they are catching up now.
Competitors will check in and launch at the Amelia Boat Launch between 5:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Weigh in will take place under the bridge at the barbecue festival at Greenwood and Front streets in Morgan City.
The top 25 teams who score enough points from the three Check-it Stick events will get a chance to compete for a fully-rigged Tidewater Bay Boat with a Yamaha Outboard in October.
For those interested, there still is time to sign up for the tournament, as long as it’s prior to the Monday before the scheduled event. For more information, visit www.theredfishseries.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Flores is The Daily Review’s Outdoor Writer.