South Jersey Shark Tournament possible one or two openings on the 55 Hooked Up 11

[Caveman Sportfishing]

This might be the first one I may miss in almost 20 years but it could happen this year. I have definitely have 3 anglers and possibly 4 that want to fish it but need one and possibly two more if the 4th angler decides he does not want in. He actually prefers to fish Jim's Tournament because of the cost this year and he has fished every year with me for over 15 years in the SJT but his personnel business is way off this year and I am hearing the same from so many other shark fisherman we know and that have fished with us in the past. Hoping the tournament goes well and has lots of boats fishing it regardless of whether we get in or not as it has been kind of a Cape May tradition for us for almost 20 years now. Best of luck to all that fish the tournament. Cost about $1000.00 per man roughly as I am keeping costs way down compared to other years and anyone that joins us has a very good chance to do well as we have won a decent amount of money in this tournament as well as winning Jim's Shark Tournament 3 times. The big advantage is we can go if the weather is a little nasty pretty much any where we want and that is exactly what happened in 2006 or 2007 I believe when many boats just could not fish the second day in the sloppy seas but we ran 26-30 knots in them and caught around 5 Makos in two days of fishing but the biggest was only around 180 lbs. It is tough these days to catch a 200 lb Mako but we have as good if not better change than most who enter the tournament but like all tournaments having fun and being able to do some serious tournament fishing is really what it is about as very few actually win money compared to the number of boats entered most years.
We did catch the first Mako weighed in New Jersey on June 7th 2007 but finding one over 200 lbs will probably take running a ways this year and I would be shocked to see one that qualifies caught anywhere inside 30 fathoms until later in June but we will see. I already pretty much know where we will be running if we fish the tournament and it will be as far SE as these tournament allows which is 60 miles. This area is one of my favorite early season Mako spots and has produced a good number of decent size Makos in the past and it usually has the best water with lots of life the first couple of weeks of June year in and year out and it is a little warmer than most northern locations which helps avoid the Blue Dogs but we will have to wait and see what water temps are like next weekend.






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