Ft Lauderdale Billfish

[soundownsam]

Wish me and the rest of the SAIL club ( a local fishign club started through a local FL fishing forum similiar to Reel-Time) luck as we start fishing tommorow in the Ft Lauderdale Billfish tournament. This tournament is a 3 day event featuring some of South Florida's top skippers including names such as Ray Rosher, Dean Panos, Bouncer Smith and the list goes on.

After weeks of preparing leaders and catching bait we fell that we are ready and fully able to compete with any thing the fish, other teams or mother nature throws at us. We will be fishing in style thatnks to Hi Catch the importer of Momoi Line who will be hostign us on theor company 31' Intrepid. I will try and post updates at the end of each day if I can keep my eyes open.

Sam

[soundownsam]

Well if anyone was waiting with baited breath we didn't win. However, we did end up with 3 releases by the end of day 2 which put us in 11th place going into the final day. Sunday we decided to pass up a report of a decent bite and run South to where we had found fish at the end of day 2. Unfortunately for us the good water moved off and we had a long day of fishing ahead of us with no sails and only a few small dolphin to show for our effort.

I am still waiting to see where we ended up in the overall standings, however I am sure we were in the top 20 and probably the top 15 based on time of our 3rd release. We also did manage the largest Kingfish of the tournament which provided enough $$ to play the gas bill (or at least some of it). We also boated a 46lb Cobia which was recently eleminated as a fun fish division for this tournament a rules change that I estimate cost us 5K.

All in all it was a great tournament and while it woudl have been nice to win being able to fish competetively with the best captains and teams in south Florida is something I am very proud of.



Sam