Had an opportunity to fish the Caterpillar Cup / Fish For Life Salifish Tournament which is held in conjunction with the Buccaneer Cup a couple of weeks ago on board the Foolish Pleasure. Seems that Caterpillar needed a boat for some clients to fish on and they thought the Big Girl would fit the bill.
GW and I flew down to FLA that Monday morning to prep the boat for the trip from Marathon up to Palm Beach. Headed out on Tuesday in some pretty sloppy weather but fortunately she is a Big Girl and it was on our ass most of the way. BTW - the wipers work GREAT!
Spent Wednesday rigging and provisoning the boat with our local mate Kevin. We are not too familiar with the sailfishing in that area so Kevin brought us up to speed on what had been going on. We met up with our crew at the captains meeting and made plans to have a good time fishing over the next few days. Tony and Mike would be fishing with us Day 1. Chris and Michael would be added to the team for Day 2 and some fun fishing on Saturday. None of them had much experience with circle hooks or sailfishing for that matter. This is not a hook and hand tourney so the plan was to go out and have fun and troll dead bait to take advantage of the higher points per fish.
Got an early start on Thursday (Day 1) and cleared the inlet after grabbing some live google eyes just in case. It was a good day of fishing for the fleet of 24 boats as we collectively released 122 sailfish. We ended up with 3 for 7 on sails and 20+ mahis - 2 of which were decent fish to 22 pounds.
The rest of the team was on board for Friday (Day 2) and we were able to stay away from the green menace most of the day. 2 for 5 on sails that day was all we could connect on. The fleet of 24 had another good day releasing a total of 114 sails.
Saturday was a fun fishing day for us while most of the other boats finished up Day 3 of the Buccaneer Cup. As quick as the bite had turned on a few days earlier it effectively shut off that day as the remaining boats in the Buc Cup only released 27 sails. It was very tough for us too as we only saw one group of tailers and perhaps 1 free jumper. Got a few more mahis for the guys and played with some jacks and triple tails that were held up under a floating barrel. Just as well - the boys wanted to get in early anyway to pretty up for the awards banquet at the Sailfish Club.
Foolish Pleasure ended up with 5 sailfish releases over the 2 day event for 1000 points and a trophy for 2nd place largest meat fish. The entire crew had a great time and even learned a thing or two during the tourney. GW and I took the boat back to Marathon on Sunday and hopped a plane back north the the land of ice and snow at 0'dark thirty Monday AM.
Big thanks to the Turners, Caterpillar, the Genardis, and Kevin for helping make the week a success.
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