Lake Tarpon Report 5/25 Tuesday Night Tournament

I had a rare Tuesday night off of work so Kevin and I decided to fish the weekly Tuesday night tournament and try our luck with lakes best. We started off getting on a few fish in the northwest end but couldn't get anything over 12 inches so we moved across to the northeast side to fish some docks but nothing doing there either pitching Bitters Baits and chunking rattletraps. With an hour gone from the 3 1/2 hour tournament we decided to head south to our money spot where we picked up one keeper pushing 2 lbs. With about a half hour left and darkness settled in we decided to take a quick jab at one last spot and we hit paydirt! Unfortunately, we only had about 10 minutes to try and get a limit before we had to race back to the northend of the lake! I nailed a quick keeper on chug bug as they were popping everywhere in front of us! A couple minutes later I got another strike in the pitch darkness on a chugbug, this time she was giving me a good fight so I knew it was a decent fish! Trying to net a nice fish in total darkness can be a little tricky but Kevin scooped her up like a pro on got her in the boat. She went 18 inches and over 3lbs but it wouldn't be enough as we ran out of time and had to get back to the ramp for the weigh-in. We rolled in 4 minutes late so we decided not to weigh-in our 3 fish but would have had around 6 pounds. Around 14 pounds won the tournament with big bass about 4 and half pounds. Temp was a balmy 80-85 degrees with water temps around 87.