Its4Reels!-Parker23
Well-known member
Team It’s 4 Reels was represented by me, Roger Cortez, Richard Catozza and Pedro Moreno. The tournament circuit started out in San Felipe moved on to Bahia de los Angeles and next to San Quintin. The final stop was Ensenada which was a one day tourney for the largest fish. The top winners for each tourney would compete for the Governors Cup in the Tournament of Champions fish off on Sunday.
We headed out on Saturday with a nice load of sardines in very nice sea conditions. We headed towards some numbers that we picked up from Fish Dope. The area would be somewhere N/NW of the D220. Along the way we found the porpoise just outside the 295 and we would land what would be the 2nd place fish on a black & purple daisy chain cedar plug. In fact we landed 4 yellowfin of which 3 of the fish would qualify as top ten finishers. We also found many paddies in the area of the D220 and cleaned up on the 6-10 lb. dorado that were under every paddy. Here a couple pics for day 1 of the tournament:
Day 2 (Sunday) saw us in seas that had the dreaded washing machine effect. We headed to the area where we found the porpoise the day before and within a few minutes we found them again. Out went the trollers and as we went through the pod we metered lots of fish. After trolling and also stopping and fishing deep we had zero hits. So we picked up and ran to the area we fished the day before and nobody was home. So we headed to a second set of numbers that were SW of the D220. About 4 miles before the area we spot what seemed to be the entire San Diego sport boat fleet. And the reason they were there was due to the fact that the area was loaded with kelp paddies and it seemed that everyone was holding yellowfin, dorado and yellowtail. The bad news for us was that these fish were all less than 10 lbs. We needed to weigh in our top 5 fish so we caught our limits of dorado and a couple of yellowtail and tuna and left them biting in search of bigger game. We continued trolling west and picked up a couple of small skippies but the albacore that were in the area eluded us. At 31.23 and 117.34 Pedro spots a marlin. We brought in the trollers and switched my Shimano Tyrnos 30 to live bait. We had only 1 small mackerel in the tank and we needed to make it count. After losing sight of the fish Roger went up top and spotted him again. We tossed some sardines and the marlin rushed the boat to eat them. He made a turn towards my mackerel and he took it I made a count of 10 and swung. And NADA! I was thinking that I had just lost our best shot to win the tourney when he picked it up again. I waited a little longer and I swung hard and this time the hook stuck. He dove, jumped, thrashed, sulked and fought like there was no tomorrow which there would not be:
After sinking two gaffs into him, taking photos and cleanup we were 64 miles from the Ensenada Harbor entrance with three hours to go before the weigh in station would close. We batoned down the hatches and ran for the harbor in washing machine conditions. We took a pounding but made weigh in with 12 minutes to spare. We took the championship with 170 lbs of fish. It was pretty exciting getting all the attention from the media and everyone who was on the malecon wanting to take pictures with our catch:
After the weigh in was officially closed and the tourney officials verified our catch and declared us the winners. The ceremony would be held under the big flag at the malecon at 7pm so we had just enough time to get the boat back to her slip at the Marina Coral, clean our catch and clean up ourselves a little:
We took home some cash, 5 sets of Shimano rods and reels, 2 trips for 2 to Hotel Rancho Buena Vista, a chance to fish off against the Baja Sur winners in Rancho Buena Vista in November and the Governors Cup. It was a great tournament that was pretty well organized and everyone seemed to have had a great time. This was also a big deal for Ensenada and Baja California as we made the front page of the el Vigia newspaper and there was also a big article in the sports section of the El Mexicano newspaper. Thanks to my team mates for helping to get the job done.
We headed out on Saturday with a nice load of sardines in very nice sea conditions. We headed towards some numbers that we picked up from Fish Dope. The area would be somewhere N/NW of the D220. Along the way we found the porpoise just outside the 295 and we would land what would be the 2nd place fish on a black & purple daisy chain cedar plug. In fact we landed 4 yellowfin of which 3 of the fish would qualify as top ten finishers. We also found many paddies in the area of the D220 and cleaned up on the 6-10 lb. dorado that were under every paddy. Here a couple pics for day 1 of the tournament:
Day 2 (Sunday) saw us in seas that had the dreaded washing machine effect. We headed to the area where we found the porpoise the day before and within a few minutes we found them again. Out went the trollers and as we went through the pod we metered lots of fish. After trolling and also stopping and fishing deep we had zero hits. So we picked up and ran to the area we fished the day before and nobody was home. So we headed to a second set of numbers that were SW of the D220. About 4 miles before the area we spot what seemed to be the entire San Diego sport boat fleet. And the reason they were there was due to the fact that the area was loaded with kelp paddies and it seemed that everyone was holding yellowfin, dorado and yellowtail. The bad news for us was that these fish were all less than 10 lbs. We needed to weigh in our top 5 fish so we caught our limits of dorado and a couple of yellowtail and tuna and left them biting in search of bigger game. We continued trolling west and picked up a couple of small skippies but the albacore that were in the area eluded us. At 31.23 and 117.34 Pedro spots a marlin. We brought in the trollers and switched my Shimano Tyrnos 30 to live bait. We had only 1 small mackerel in the tank and we needed to make it count. After losing sight of the fish Roger went up top and spotted him again. We tossed some sardines and the marlin rushed the boat to eat them. He made a turn towards my mackerel and he took it I made a count of 10 and swung. And NADA! I was thinking that I had just lost our best shot to win the tourney when he picked it up again. I waited a little longer and I swung hard and this time the hook stuck. He dove, jumped, thrashed, sulked and fought like there was no tomorrow which there would not be:
After sinking two gaffs into him, taking photos and cleanup we were 64 miles from the Ensenada Harbor entrance with three hours to go before the weigh in station would close. We batoned down the hatches and ran for the harbor in washing machine conditions. We took a pounding but made weigh in with 12 minutes to spare. We took the championship with 170 lbs of fish. It was pretty exciting getting all the attention from the media and everyone who was on the malecon wanting to take pictures with our catch:
After the weigh in was officially closed and the tourney officials verified our catch and declared us the winners. The ceremony would be held under the big flag at the malecon at 7pm so we had just enough time to get the boat back to her slip at the Marina Coral, clean our catch and clean up ourselves a little:
We took home some cash, 5 sets of Shimano rods and reels, 2 trips for 2 to Hotel Rancho Buena Vista, a chance to fish off against the Baja Sur winners in Rancho Buena Vista in November and the Governors Cup. It was a great tournament that was pretty well organized and everyone seemed to have had a great time. This was also a big deal for Ensenada and Baja California as we made the front page of the el Vigia newspaper and there was also a big article in the sports section of the El Mexicano newspaper. Thanks to my team mates for helping to get the job done.
