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For those of you who have been living in a hole the past few months, our fishery in the Gulf of Mexico has been completely shut down since the early weeks of May. Lifestyles have been shaken up, sources of income shot, and the constant thought of "will everything ever be back to normal?" constantly coursing through our heads. Anyhow, what normally is the last tournament of the year became the first, the Mobile Big Game Fishing Club's Annual Labor Day Tournament was held this past weekend out of Orange Beach. This tournament usually sees 90+ boats, but this year, with many of the big battlewagons in destinations such as the Keys, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Bahamas and the like, we were happy to get 58 participants and over six figures up for grabs in the calcutta.
This past week crept by painfully slowly, as we spent most of the week making preparations to the boat to get it ready for Labor Day tournament. As the days passed and the weekend forecast began to unfold quite favorably, I felt an excitement that I haven't felt for quite a few weeks. Not sure if it was stemmed from lack of ahem..playtime, or lack of a good fish burning the drags up in my Tiagras, but whatever it was, it was a thirst that needed to be quenched. Thursday night resembled Christmas eve, and it took me forever to fall asleep, in anticpation of what the weekend would bring us. With a relatively small crew compared to most tournaments, we headed southeast to see what we could do for the first (usually last) tournament of the year for us. Expectations were low as the water quality hasn't been stellar in the past few weeks, but spirits were high as our team made our way out Friday night. Saturday trolled pretty water (blended blue; clear, but not cobalt by any means) all day but with not much action. Had two smaller dolphin smash the wahoo baits and put them in the boat. Not another hit until sunset when we boated our first wahoo. Not 10 minutes later and the shotgun goes off with my new favorite lure. 10-15 minutes later and a 46 pound wahoo hit the teak.
High fives went around for everybody, as we had a feeling this might be one of the fish we needed. Original plans to stay out and swordfish were canned as we moved into some shallower water for the evening. Had an excellent dinner of ribeyes, corn, potatoes, and some other veggies and I hit the hay after watching some baby sailfish as well as other creatures of the deep play in our lights. Awoke to a slight drizzle the next morning and about 12 of these little guys taking some naps on our vessel.
Well no pirate captain is complete without the flag (pictured later) and a bird perched on his shoulder to help navigate so after I cajoled the little creature as to his safety with me, I picked him and placed him on my shoulder to look the part!
Anyhow, not much action to speak of until lunchtime til we boated another wahoo. Plenty of bait all weekend in the form of flyers and some hardtails under buckets with tons of tripletails accompanying. Never came across any real good lines but I understand there were some a little south of where we were. Came across a school of busting blackfin and 4 of our rods went off with 20-30 pound blackfin. Got all of them to the boat to add a little red meat to the mix. Pointed the bow north shortly thereafter for the weigh-in. Our little hoo was good enough for 3rd place in the tournament. Had a great time and it was great to see the gulf without any brown and sticky stuff on the top of it...which somehow made it onto one of my lures instead.
Oh and if any of yall want to know what wahoo are eating these days, it's these little guys. So make sure to load up on juvenile pufferfish if you wanna catch you some fresh hooters
I haven't learned how to post pics amidst the text. I also have a sweet youtube video to embed if someone can show me how?
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Originally Posted by pmcgucken
