Day 1 Contender Classic Updates and Photos

[jwalker]

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Most boats/teams think a troll strike will either stick or not stick so most teams troll a thin spread and concentrate on sight fishing for the Stripeys.
A team will have 1-3 guys on the gyros and all hands on deck looking for fish.
Many boats will have one guy running the cockpit and all others sighting fish. The tournament ONLY ALLOWS 6 people in any boat, so everyone has a job to do.

Every boat has a bow and cockpit tank holding dozens of mack's. Two rods in the Bow and 2 rods in the Stern on average are bridled up and ready to go. On a good boat: When sighting a fish (right off the bow to 2 miles away) it only takes a matter of seconds for everyone to be in poisiton to cast and take in the troll spread. People are moving! that's why you see BOW RAILS on most west coast boats as they are running up and down the rails.. They look at the Carolina style boats with clean Bows and no rails and shake their heads..

First caster throws off the Bow and then 2 and 3 bait's off the nose of the feeders or sleeper surface marlin. Then 1-2 guys will drop back a bait from the cockpit and you have 3-5 baits in the water waiting for the PICK-UP!
If you come up on a school of feeders you can get on 2-4 fish on at a time and then it's a matter of working closest to the boat for releases.

Tackle:
Trolling: Most boats are trolling 30's and 50's with 50-80lb line (80max)
Casters: Most useTrinidad 30's, 40's and alsoTorium 30's, Avet's and some of the new small high drag Accurate's. Some of us are trying the Penn Torques' this year. Reels are spooled with 65 Spectra and 30-50 Mono top-shot's.
Rods are 7-8' calstar 700 series, We sell dozens of Marlin Live Bait casters built on calstar blanks and oversized SIC casting guides.
YES: all caster's cast conventional tackle out here, Spinning rods are not used and looked down on

If you can't see them you can't Catch-Em is the thought process.. The teams with the best eyes usually catch the most fish. A good gyro guy will NEVER leave his postion until lines out.. Bottle to piss in and food/drink delivered to him, locked into the gyros for the day and they use a signal system to relay where the fish is as it could be over a mile away when first sighted.

NOTE: Team Chiquelin is in first place today with 3 releases, Their Captain is nicknamed "THE BEAK" becasue he has eyes like a seagull! local legend..

Big twist and addition this year are the Contender center console boats that totally go against the style and technique developed out here on sighting fish from a high tower..
So far they are doing pretty damm good so it will be interesting to see how they end up..

Windy so harder than normal to sight the fish...

[Flattop]

Originally Posted by johnseafood

Wow what it must be like to have not one but 2 chairs on the tower looking forward for people to keep an eye out. Now thats something you don't see all the time.

Awesome pics I know kobeys not getting them

I just hope the guy had his radar off.

[Flattop]

John / Kobie,

Thanks for the pics. Good jobs as usual.

Jwalker,

Thanks for the breakdown on the west coast fishing style.

[Tower Todd]

Great pics! Would love to see if you could score an interview with Steve Lassley or "the Beak". Keep it comin'.

TT

[Capt. Brian Daley]

Now thats a fine way to get some green radiocactive nuts riding a tower

[bigtuna128]

as always sfc comes thru great work it is pretty cool too see there different style of fishing and those rigs are nice i would hate to see those fuel burn bills nice job thanks

[LuckyLady]

Speaking of fuel what is the price of fuel over there. I was out there a couple years ago and it was crazy.

[jwalker]

Will be the big news over here, I will not spoil the results but let's just say some tight competition in some rough conditions today...lines are out!

[Fins&Feathers]

Thanks for the water pics it feels like I am out there trolling around.