Tournament Day

Manny Quintana is one of those guys who always seems to bring good luck when he comes fishing on the L&H. On one trip after landing several hundred pounds of dolphin we found a mako eating a sword, pulled in the 300 pound sword perfectly in tack missing only its tail then caught the big mako, but thats another story. Today Manny booked us for a small tournament and brought several of his friends and co-workers along. The president of the company James Walker came all the way from Minnesota amd Manny told me on the phone several days before the trip that it was very important James had a good day. After an early start we stopped at a spot where there had been some big kings and the fish were there. For the next few hours the fishing was red hot. We landed our limit of two kings per person (18 fish) including four kings over thirty pounds! James caught a beautiful 65 pound sail and we also released another sail and got a couple nice cero mackeral and a pile of bonitas. It was such a nice day we decided to do some sight fishing. As I cruised the shallows I spotted a couple big permit. The fish were hungry and we now had two thirty plus pound permit to add to the collection. It was the first day of grouper season and the guys wanted some for dinner so we tried a couple spots, but the amberjacks would not let a bait get past them. I managed to hook a nice blackfin tuna over one of the spots and after we put nine big amberjacks in the boat our 500 pound capacity fishbox was overflowing and we were forced to start putting fish in the baitwells! It was time to head for the scales. While running through stiltsville on the way to the weigh in we got stopped by the park police. They wanted to check our catch and Wes and my son James were forced to unload six hundred pounds of fish onto the deck of the L&H! What a sight! The park officers were shocked. They had been stopping boats all day and we had more fish than all the others combined. Of coarse we were within our legal limit so after a quick review of our licences they let us go. We ended up with the largest fish for a charterboat and our guys were very happy. Everyone went home with bags and coolers full of fish and also the first place trophy! It was another wonderful day onboard the L&H!