Every year we fish the rodeo with my wife, children and a
few friends. It is a family oriented
tournament and everyone usually has a good time. The field is very competitive and we work very hard to get ready for the two day
event. Finally after countless hours of
preparation and days of bait fishing we were ready to go. Twenty to twenty-five mile per hour winds and
ten foot seas greeted us the first day. Taking our time, we got to the area we wanted to start at and got set
up. The day started slow and was very
rough! We caught a few keeper kings and
saw a big mahi that we didn’t get. The
very next drift we caught a weigher dolphin and things were looking up. Next drift, my daughter Laurel, had a nice
fish that was acting like a tuna. After
a while we could see Laurel did in fact have a big tuna and that there was a
shark trying to get it. I feared the
shark would bite the tuna and disqualify our catch. After a few nerve racking moments, the tuna
decided to take its fate into its own hands.
Rather than getting eaten by the hungry shark, the tuna decided it would
rather jump on the boats engine bracket and dry out! And that is exactly what
happened!!!!!!! Laurel’s tuna leaped on
the bracket only to have my thrifty son James standing ready and quickly
grabbed the tuna and threw it in the boat. Minutes later James had a big fish on that managed to get wrapped in a
competitor's line. I tried desperately to
get close to the other boat hoping James would be able to untangle the mess. It was just too rough we couldn’t get close
enough and unfortunately the other boat broke their fish off and James was able
to land another big tuna that would help us out in the standings! Later in the afternoon we added a couple
more tunas that would give us our limit for the day! At the end of day one our team would weigh a limit of
kingfish, limit of tuna and a nice dolphin which would be enough for us to be
sitting in second place.
Day two would offer up calmer seas and with a shorter day we
would have to fish fast and make our bites count. Right away we caught a couple keeper kings
including a nice twenty-five pounder for Laurel. Then we had a big king sky on the left long
kite, but got the bait off the hook, before anyone could say a word, the flatline took off with a big tuna. It was just one of those tournaments where
most everything went right and very little went wrong. As my friend Louis says, “When it’s for
you…it’s for you. We would finish the
second day with another limit of kingfish and two big tunas! After waiting to weigh our fish and coming
up with a total of way over three hundred pounds we were declared the
WINNERS!!!!!!!!! It was such an amazing
feeling and I was so very proud of my family and my team! We ended up Top Boat, Top Male Angler, Top
Junior Angler and Top Family!!!! A
great tournament with my wonderful family!!!!
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