Fished the VBTT this past Friday 7-10-2009. I can't say enough about Bob and his tourney. It is an awesome tournament. The parties and food alone are worth it. We had a blast.
Ok to the report. C-Note crew. Me, CarsonMac, Pat(midwest transplant), Mike and Vinny Voci, and Maloney. Woke up to a stiff 15kt northeast wind. This was our only day to fish so we decided to go out. We left Lynnhaven at 4am. Took the worst ass kicking I have ever taken on a boat to get to some fish. We were greeted with 4-6 NE wind waves and we were going straight into it. I mean it was nasty. 15kts is all we could make. We were going to the parking lot 70 miles out but we never made it. Started east of the 26 mile hill and dropped lines at 7:30.
At 9 we get the big bite we are looking for on the meat stick. He smoke it and we are tight. All goes well and Pat does a great job angling and Carson mating and we bring a 121 lb BFT over the rail. That was really awesome and we are in contention at 9:30 am. WOW. We pick up and run into the 21 mile hill and get a short strike and a real nice long rigger bite that pulls off near the boat. This fish felt like an over but we were not sure. Damn. Worked our way south to the bite and at 12:30 we were tight oun our second tuna. Had a few gaffers and missed bites in between.
This is where our inexperince showed. We decided to kill the 28lb BFT and run to the canyon for a shot at the YFT and going for first place. I'm not sure if we shouldn't have culled the tuna and looked for a bigger under. A 50lber would have put us in the money or at least a trophy. Who knows maybe we wouldn't have gotten the bite. We were going for the win only.
We fished near the canyon for our last hour and a half looking for that pesky YFT praying for one bite to put us atop the leader board but to no avail. We finished 7th. It was a great tourney thanks to Bob and everyone else who made it so enjoyable.