Star Island Whitewater Challenge

[JoeyM]

So I took a week of vacation. First day of my vacation is Kingman Yacht Center Offshore tournament. This was the first fishing tournament we have ever entered. It was a bust. The weather blew, nobody made it canyons, and nobody weighed in any tuna. We fished mudhole and caught nothing.

Then all week it rained during my vacation and hurricane Katia was off the coast making big swells. The Star Island Whitewater Challenge tournament get's pushed back a day due to weather, and we come very close to not going at all. But in the end we made the run to Montauk on Fri to fish Sat and Sunday. The swell was big but teh ride was still smooth when the wind died down Friday.

The number of boats that entered wasn't very high due to the hurricanes. But there were still some nice boats there. Where we were slipped there were 4 triple powered F350 boats and one triple F250 boat.

Here is 4950 Yamaha HP:




Friday night, they had the Capt's meeting and BBQ, and then Sat morning was shotgun start at 6 am. This was our first visit to Montauk and I have to say it was really nice. Star Island Yacht Club is very convenient in every aspect. Bait and ice were delivered to our boat in the morning and the shop has everything. It's much better stocked than anything in RI (although it does have NY prices!). The fish cleaning station was very nice too.







The shotgun start was fun. We ended up rounding Montauk point 2nd. A triple F350 39 Contender passed us out of the hole, but we hung with him running around 55 mph. The boat that should have been out front had issues at the dock and was late. That was a new 39 Contender ST that they said could run in the 70's. We were the only Yellowfin in this tournament which was outboard boats only.


















cont. below

[JoeyM]

Once we rounded the point the boats went in all different directions. The seas were calm, but there was a swell. We cruised at 40-45 mph, except for a few times when we hit fog, where we slowed down to 35-38. We had been debating between the tails and west atlantis for days. we finally saw temp shot from that morning and water at west atlantis looked better to us, so thats where we went.


after staring at only the radar for awhile and being exhausted already from little sleep, i reached my waypoint i was about to throttle back. my wife said, "not here". i said, "why not? the break will be within a few miles of here." she said, "this isn't it yet, keep going." i grumbled fine. for the next several miles we "discussed", til she was finally happy with the temps we saw, and she let me throttle back. we started getting spread out, in the fog. could not see if there was any life around us.





we managed to get about half the spread out when the starboard long rigger rainbow bar starts screaming. we had been trolling for maybe 10 mins. no chance for multiples as there were only 4 lines out. not much to clear we worked on fish.













cont. below

[JoeyM]

we worked that area for awhile. we picked up a couple more yft, but they were smaller. eventually we stopped getting hits, so we worked our way southeast into the warmer water.



the water was beautiful blue and the fog cleared. we found no life though, so we turned and headed straight south to the edge as we had been on the flats. we worked our way to the edge and found lots of life. whales and dolphins and birds, but we couldnt get a hit.









so we worked our way back to the flats where we caught the first few fish. within a hundred yards of where we caught the first fish a rod went off, and it was another nice fish.







time was running out, but we stayed another half hour and got bit pretty quickly.









another:





we were going to run in and shark for an hr, but we decided to just head in. we were happy and tired. following sea and light winds we were able to cruise in at 45 mph. took us less than 2 hrs to get back to montauk.



cont. below

[JoeyM]

we were happy with our haul on this short canyon trip. we didn't see another boat the entire time we trolled the canyons. we also didn't hear any radio chatter and couldn't raise anybody on the radio. i think we were really alone where we were.

back at the docks we unloaded and went to the weigh in. the tuna category had two prizes for largest tuna, first and second place. you were allowed to weigh in two fish. it wasn't hard for us to pick the two. we had 6 fish, the two largest were 53.2 and 51.9 pounds







at the cleaning station:









cont. below

[JoeyM]

there were some nice stripers caught for the striped bass portion of the tourney:





no weigh-able sharks were caught. other boats ran to atlantis, the fishtails, and even tom's canyons! the 39 Whitewater Marine Contender was the boat that ran to Tom's. They saw nice water with skippie's and Mahi but no tuna. the boat in the tails found small albacore. the boat at atlantis caught one 49 lb yft and a few smaller fish.

sunday there was a small craft advisory so they cancelled the offshore fishing. so everybody was bass fishing. we are horrible bass fisherman and Montauk point was a little sporty. we caught a few bluefish and one short bass, then decided to come in early and just have lunch and hang by the bar.





in the end we were surprised our yellowfin were big enough to win first and second place in the tuna category. no sharks were weighed in. a 42 lb. bass took first in the bass category. i think a 12 lb. bluefish won the bluefish calcutta. overall it was an awesome weekend, and a great event run by Whitewater Marine.










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[stew]

Nice job guys!!! Capt. Eric

[BFThunter]

Great report! Felt like I was right there on the boat with you, unfortuneatly I got to the end and realized I'm still at my desk.....

[quakah]

Nice pictorial! What lense are you using?

[scottmori]

Great job!! Looks like the yf raises fish and is a tournament winner!! Glad weather worked out for you.
Scott

[nsvencer]

Congrats and awesome write up. Thanks for the read.