SD Marlin Club Halibut Tourney 6/5

DaGoose · Jun-06-2004, 07:52 AM

Fished in the San Diego Marlin Club Don Blackman Memorial Halibut tourney yesterday with my good bud RT on his boat Boom Zing, a 17ft glaspar. Launched in Mission Bay at 5:00am and headed north. The water was nice and flat (finally!) making the hour run a breeze.

It just didn’t happen for us yesterday. We worked many spots along the coast as hard as possible. Got our only legal fish at 10:00 going about 14lbs and each missed one other bite. That was it. Headed back in at 3:00 for the weigh in.

Dropped the boat off at RT’s , jumped in my truck with the fish, and off to The Marlin Club. Made it with 8 minutes to spare. Didn’t think the fish was good enough but you always have to weigh em in because you never know. We were right. She didn’t stand a chance. The Bingham boys and Jerry Adams hung some very nice fish, as usual. Mike B had a 26 followed by Jerry with another 26 and Jim B with one over 20 for fourth. These guys are GOOD. They didn't fish north.

Chowed down and burgers and hot dogs. I was hopeful that maybe I could at least get lucky and score in the raffle. RT won twice. Time for the grand finally, two nice reels. The Penn Formula 15kg was claimed by ??? fisherman. Last but not least, the Penn 30SW. Mel Jones won this. He is on fire after sweeping the field in the Stop, Drop & Reel tourney two weeks ago.

Got back to RT’s and pulled the truck up next to the Boom Zing to quickly collect the rest of my stuff and head home. Left her running. Threw everything in the back of the truck and go to get in and take off. Well, somehow we managed to lock the doors and I can’t get in. DOH. 30 minutes later AAA shows up and sorts it out.

It was another great day on the water with RT. We had a blast.

Tight Lines All,

DaGoose

Mots · Jun-06-2004, 09:01 AM

Bummer dude, I was hoping you were gonna slay this one.

Trevor · Jun-06-2004, 09:25 AM

At least you had a good time. Who fishes a penn 30SW for halibut?

DaGoose · Jun-06-2004, 09:41 AM

Mots,

Thanks for that. We gave it hell and it just wasn't our day. That's fishing eh? Hopefully I can do better with Mots Sr next saturday. Looking forward to it! Then it's time to chase the pelagics.

Trevor,

:FU:

DaGoose

Tunaslam · Jun-06-2004, 06:04 PM

If you fished Oceanside and then ran the fish down to SD, you would of nailed it. Better luck next time, but a 14 lb. fish a bad either.

Trevor · Jun-06-2004, 08:22 PM

Hey now, you made it sound like a good time. I would love to catch a 14 pound halibut any day.

?? fisherman · Jun-06-2004, 10:13 PM

Gawd I love that tourney!!

Well I guess I should add my report here even though I am a bit ashamed at some of the things that happened for us (me) yesterday.

I fished this tourney this year with my buddie Dave and one of my other good fishing partners Ryon. We fished somewhere south of where Rick fished

. Ryon was hooked up within 5 minutes after dropping his first bait in the water (in fact I had not even baited up yet) and as he worked the fish up to the surface I was ready with the gaff and was leaning over the port corner getting ready to gaff the fish when the bait net somehow got knocked into the water and was slowly sinking. So here I am ready to gaff this fish, but am now watching both the fish and the net and quickly trying to figure out if I have time to swing at the sinking bait net, well to cut to the chase I SCREWED UP!!! I was not able to get the net, so I then made a swing at the halibut and flailed big time, and the fish ended up breaking off on Ryon. We knew this wasnt a tournament winning fish, but it was still a respectable fish that was probably around 15#s.

I felt real bad about losing that fish for Ryon especially being in a tourney, as it was my job to stick it and I screwed it up by getting distracted by the net ordeal, plus the fact that I had never missed a gaff on a halibut prior to that day, Oh well live and learn right? Well I had some more living and learning later that day

!

As we continued on with our fishing I finally connected with one and we succesfully boated it, although it was only a small one going maybe 6-7lbs.

At about 1:30 I finally hooked a very very good fish while bouncing a fish trap! This thing hit HARD and layed down on the bottom!! It had PIG weight written all over it, as I was struggling just to budge it up just a little at a time! everytime I would carefully and stressfully gain about 10 inches on it, it would just start doing heavy headshakes and take out line on me, I was so stressed fighting this fish as I knew it was a good one, but it wasnt to be for us that day as it ended up breaking me off!! I could end up second guessing myself to death over this (and have), and if there was anything I could have done differently, I would have loosened up the drag a bit. I dont really think I had it all that tight, but with hooking it on a fish trap there is not much worry of it breaking the line by chaffing it with it's teeth as it could possibly do on a bait fish, so a loose drag would have been better IMO. Afterall a halibut is not going to spool you like some tuna or other fish may do, so its all a patient game of tug of war.

Anyways, it was a great tourney seeing alot of good buddies! Let me tell you those Binghams who are great friends of mine are incredible butt fisherman!! Congrats to Mike Bingham with his second win in a row in this tourney with his 26.6 lb butt on the Harvey B III, and also for taking the juniors 1st place with a 16 lb + butt ( sorry forgot the anglers name), and then second place went to another buddie Jerry Adams (another incredible butt fisherman) with his 26 lber, and his teamate Jimmy Bingham taking 5th with a 23lber, (sorry but I cant remember the 3rd and fourth info).

Good bumping into you again Rick!

The unknown fisherman :p