SPORTFISHERMEN.COM & OVERNIGHT BILLFISH TOURNAMENT - Ocean City, NJ 2007

**LuckyLady** · 08-04-2007, 09:06 AM

Let me 1st start by saying what an awesome trip this was. Old friends and new friends along.

I also need to Thank alot of people for making this happen!

Admin / John Eppehimer YOU ROCK & THANK YOU very very much for everything that you did to make this happen!

Crew you guys were awesome and great job of getting it done!

Off the Hook - Thank you for your superb services as always!

Chuck Arnold & Contender Boats Thank you for the use of your boats, It was a spectacular trip for us!

On to the report....

Sunday night John & I attended the Ocean City Marlin & Tuna Club Overnight Billfish Tournament both as sponsors of the tournament. In speaking to "Chuck Speaking" on the way down to the event we decided we wanted to put the 36 in the tournament and rock the house! So on starts the fun!

Boat is in Virginia, no crew, I have to work and John is about to go crazy!

Chuck brought the boat up Monday night to start the adventure. Tuesday morning we have a crew, Tuesday night get the boat in the water and time to dial her in. Now the fun starts and this is where my big Thanks to everyone that helped comes in! John spent the next to days with Crew member Joe prepping the boat and getting her dialed in.

Thursday morning 5AM departure and we headed offshore 129 miles out to the temp break so try to catch some of the action.

Just 30 miles short of our destination we seen tuna crashing on the surface and we stopped to chase and play with them but nothing substantial. Continue on!

We arrive 129 miles out we see the Viking 68 out there, and a few other big sport fish boats looking for the action. The water was beautiful crystal clear 79 - 82 just gorgeous! The dolphin were swimming and playing the whole nine yards. We witnessed the Viking 68 digging in to the action backing down hard and chasing the whites around in circles out there. We just couldn't catch a break out there so we move in in search of the tuners!

Get set up on the troll gear out and in place. We collected a bunch of skipjack, and a mahi. Continued to troll both the east and west walls of the Baltimore. Towards night fall, we raised 3 whites before we decided to line up with a scallop boat and trolled in to the night circling around without a trip of the lines.

We were showing plenty of bait and life and started our drift out in to the deep chunking. SLOW SLOW SLOW! In the early hours of Friday morning it came ALIVE tunas were surrounding the boat in reaching distance! Then the fun started Joe's hooked up and working hard and lost! Here is another, in the boat it came! Then they were still there and the SOB's would not eat! John started drifting squid out to em and HOOKED UP! John was on fire on the bow! We would gaff em and get them to the back of the boat John yells "Give me my hook back"

and off he went to the bow again John back again "Give me my hook back"

. On the Chunk we managed 4 nice YFT ranging from 55lbs to 72.5. We were happy! There were at least a dozen boats out there and all was quiet so we know we did well!

Morning came and back on the troll fairly quiet for the most part, UNTILL we seen a ball of Tuna come up behind the boat crashing hard. Still looking and watching the spread an approx 500lb Blue Marlin erupts from the ball and spread like a freight train gone wild and he the race is on. We were hooked a spooled within seconds and he was gone tail walking and all. It was a sight of a life time.

We continued to troll in till 11 am at lines in and headed to the scales. 1st boat in and tied for 1st place in the calcuttas and not the points.

We are still waiting to hear how this will play out!

All and all it was an AWESOME TRIP! Covered a lot of ground and burned 355 gallons of fuel with a 140 to spare

I will post pictures up later on!

Thanks to everyone that helped out!

**gradywhite273** · 08-04-2007, 09:24 AM

outstanding contender crew, outstanding. sounds like a great 24hrs for you guys. but you didn't burn enough fuel.

**LuckyLady** · 08-04-2007, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by gradywhite273

outstanding contender crew, outstanding. sounds like a great 24hrs for you guys. but you didn't burn enough fuel.

No sharks!

We are leaving the fuel for the WMO.

Can't beat running 35mph head sea, 3-5's, 6 guys, 200 lbs of tuna, a whole lot of gear, coolers, ice and burning .9 with trips! Just can't!

**Stripersniper** · 08-04-2007, 09:59 AM

WOW that sounds like an awesome trip. Way to go. Any Pics??

**Proheat** · 08-04-2007, 10:28 AM

Sounds like an awesome trip Mary!!
Glad that you got offshore!!
Glad to see that John got away and hooked up on some fish.

Congrats!!

**Admin** · 08-04-2007, 11:08 AM

Mary tells me at the Capt. Meeting that im fishing so I had a lot of work to do and fast as we had 27 hours of hard fishing ahead of us.
As the alarm went off at 4 am on Thursday morning I knew this would be a special trip as the gps already had a course set to travel 137 miles off the beach. I will admit my stomach was alittle turned by this but we checked the boat out over and over and had plenty of safety gear onboard.

ONE VERY QUICK NOTE ON SAFTEY GEAR!! IF YOU HAVE A GLOBALSTAR DUMP IT!!!!! You should feel good about having a sat phone onboard as it’s a extra shot at getting a emergency call in. Well let me tell you this last year it was bad and this year its way worse. Most of the time we had no signal but then the phone went to GLOBALSTAR IS OFFLINE what the hell do you mean offline!! I tried and tried for hours of this trip to get a signal as a rep for global star satellite outfitters put me into collections for not paying the bill. I refused to pay them any more last year as the service was not available. Now this year it still is not there and was way worse!!

Sorry for that rant but take it out of your emergency plan as you can not rely on that!

Ok Back to fishing stuff, ran offshore at 4200 rpm’s at around 39 knots. The sea’s were incredible and passed the canyon with 50 miles to go J Well I have always wanted to go to the real deep 7,400 feet and this was our shot. We watched the temp and 78.9 79.4 80.3 81.7 I think we found what we wanted! Weed lines and a couple other boats where on scence.

Now here is the truth of our adventure out there. We had 6 people onboard and every person has a way of fishing. Well sometimes this is not a good thing when you know you need a proper spread to compete in this game and we just did not have it going on. We watched other boats in the area backing down , backing down , backing down. The truth of the matter set in that we are just not a group of billfishermen but we GOT game for the tuner. So even though I would have given up a left ---- to stay in the deep for the night I made a decision to move back onto structure and work my ass off to attempt to put us into the game. 49 miles back to the 100 and we started working. White marlin now decided to take a peek at our spread witch really made me laugh! Go figure. I say a work boat down the line so trolled down that way. Saw one white up out of the water over there but nothing on the hooks. But we started marking some stuff. Took a look at the drift and decided we would give this a shot as the boats up on the edge did not seem to have anything going on. Mary pretty much covered it above our CREW never stopped these guys worked shifts over night and kept the chunk going. THIS was key as 2 am things started to come together. It was really frustrating to see yellow fin swim right up to the boat and turn away from hook bait but eat the chunks. We dropped down to 40 lb test and got a 2 fish in the boat. We had flying fish live on the hooks also. Live squid ? I did not see one squid all night. 2 fish were caught on dead squid on top and 2 fish were on sardines about 75 feet down.
I want to thank our crew as they worked so hard to make the bite come on and it worked.

Now for the morning and this is where I will be scared forever. My whole life when it came to billfish I have always been the guy who never saw it. Well trolling up the canyon one guy yells FISH ON!

OH COOL TUNA NUMBER 5! I was happy and turned to walk out on the deck and to my right saw an exsplosion as if a plane dropped a bomb out of the sky. I said holly shit tuna going nuts thinking bluefin. So of course im thinking the angler is on a tuna I turn for the camera and turn back around to see the angler line stretched across the back of the boat from starboard to port and all the lines pushed up against the rigger and the angler is yelling I’m about spoiled holly shit what the hell just happened and then it was all apparent. This monster went ape shit across the top of the water and put on a show that I WILL NEVER FORGET. I can see now why people are addicted to this. The show was incredible and I give blue marlin all the respect. She was pretty, she was mad and she was fast and strong as hell. I have never seen a animal in the water move so much water at one time except in videos from far away.

I will say this now thank you BLUE MARLIN for allowing me into your world for a short time and hope to see you again some day as I will remember you forever.

Every trip I take I learn something new and come home with a sence of human growth. That fish made me really appreciate what I do more then ever. For many will never see this and no one will ever see what we saw in this show. It was a show for the 36 contender crew that I will take to the grave with me.

Again I thank each and every one of you for your hard work and making this a hell of a trip.
Today is the last day of fishing and the scale opens at 1pm till 4 pm and my fingers are crossed for the crew that they stay on the board with a first place tie.

Thanks again
Capt John Eppehimer

Also thank you contender for the extreme pleasure of running your 36 to the deep and putting her to the test!
.

**Jer** · 08-04-2007, 11:40 AM

The reports sound real good

My fingers are crossed for the Contender 36 crew!

**LadyAngler** · 08-04-2007, 11:43 AM

John, we're all holding our breath here and praying that you guys Place or better yet WIN!!!!!

Glad that you got out there and finally killed something!!!