Well...met the crew for our tournament day at 0415 at Owls Creek. Destination was points north....set the GPS to take me to a place called the crotch which is a point west of the washington canyon around the 20 Fathom Finger. sea conditions were flat calm so we were cruising along at about 36 Knots. Onboard were Myself, Otter, Don, Todd30, George (M.T. Pockets) and Bryan Stedman..great crew and we had a blast all day...well...as usual we get to our spot about 40 minutes early and guess what..yes...bait and fish all around us....was marking fish up on top like crazy and seeing bait all over the top of the water getting eaten by something...ok..we'll hang out untill 0730 and get our lines in....lines in and bam..all the life that was around is gone...they really need to reconsider the lines in time...we troll there for a while and the grass starts getting really bad so we pull lines and head east towards the Washington Canyon...saw a really fishy looking spot on the north lump so we set a spread out...not 5 minutes later and there is a very small White marlin trying to eat one of my spreader bars....Bryan drops it back to him a couple of times and he picks it up, drops it, comes back and whacks it a couple more time then leaves....never got a solid hookup on him but he was making quite the racket on my spreader bar...

Long story short...end up trolling the Washington Canyon and nothing there...very sporadic reports of YFT being caught..couple of guys catching BFT on the Chunk...but we can't chunk for the tourney...pulled lines to run to the 26Mile hill and try and catch the late bite on some BFT....saw boards a couple times on the way back in and picked up a couple of gaffer 15Lb dolpin off them but no Tuna....

Awesome time with everybody and probably the calmest day out there this year....Bob

Truly a great day on the water..except for the lightning as we're coming under the the Rudee bridge!! I know we could have scored some tuna if we could have had lines in earlier...but those were the rules and even though we're priates, we wanted to play by them...very tempting though!! Great capt and crew..Otter gaffed both fish...one threw the eyes and the other right behind the head...great job!!! Brian, Todd and George..great time fishing with you guys..and Bob as always...aweseom time even though we never caught air!!!

Here's some pics...

Get Reel Conga Line in action!!!

Here's the crew...

Good Job Guys! Very Pirate-looking crew! It's frustrating seeing bait action and not being able to get lines wet. The moon phase may have pushed chow time even earlier. It's tough to balance the rules so things stay a little even, but advantage still seems to go to fast boats, boats with radar, and Pirates! Catch 'em up. Say Bob's boat doing 55 mph, but that was on General Booth Blvd at 17:03 passing Bone Shakers as I was heading for the weigh-in at Fisherman's.
Tight lines!
Dave

I think they need to change the lines in at 730 time but we'll see. I fished on Bill Fisher around you guys yesterday and we pretty much had the same results. We came back to the Norfolk at the end of the day and did manage to catch a 30 lb. yft and 3 dolphin. The crotch looked very fishy and we even saw dolphin under a few boards but couldn't get them to strike. Oh well, might as well head back down to the party tonight and get some beer and grub.

Tony G.

Yeah the lines in time is making me re-think the lines in time for the VBSF Bluewater Classic. We've been in busting bait twice now in tourneys and then the fish are done eating by the time lines-in rolls around.

See you at the party tonight.

--Don

Hey guys,
Glad to meet finally meet you guys Thursday. We fished North as well, though a little South and East of you on Friday. Managed 2-YF/1-BF and some nice gaffers to 20lbs. Weighed in at 90+ lbs. I agree on the late line in thing... disagree somewhat on the rule changes Thursday. Friday and Saturday could have been fished on a Carolina Skiff...

Team Rosie, decided to go for a BFT bite that we heard about up North and passed large schools of bait fish around the 26 mile hill along the way EARLY. Nothing seemed to be feeding on them so we continued towards our destination. About the time we arrived we heard Still Thinkin' on the radio just prior to lines in talking about tuna on the surface and knew that should have stuck with bait we passed. I just knew they were going to limit out before 8 AM. Trolled up North until around 11:00 around several large schools of bait with a single knock down; pulled lines and headed south. We found several large schools of feeding Bonito along the way towards the Fingers...Lines in. We then quickly boated a nice gaffer and a few passes later had a White in the spread. Like the one Still Thinkin' saw it liked our Spreader and took the stinger after a quick drop back by Sean. It was only on for a few minutes but provided a nice show with several jumps before throwing the hook. We did manage one more gaffer and finally a 31 lb YFT before lines out. Tough fishing but with the flat seas it was a nice ride home. BTW, Thanks Capt. Frank for having me aboard again this year.

Good job guys...we couldn't buy a tuna bite up north for anything...we probably should have played with the white a bit more but we were Tuna bound and didn't want a bill yesterday.......it was so dam flat we could have ran to the Point and caught some of those Big eyes they've been tearing up down there !.....it was a great tournament....even though I also don't agree with the last minute additional day I'm pretty sure we will be fishing it again next year......gotta go do the lawn so I can fish next weekend !!!!...lol.....Bob