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Pompano Beach & Ft. Lauderdale

Capt. Ryan McBride
August 13, 2007
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report

Pompano Beach Saltwater Showdown/Gauntlet Report

First of all congrats to Skip Dana on Pop A Top for the win, and for the biggest fish. Definitely one of the nicest guys on the tour and he actually called it a week before the tournament. Actually he pretty much called the 1st, 2nd, 3rd results but that's a whole other story.

This year we had a goal for pretty much every one of the Pompano Beach Saltwater Series tournaments, weigh something other than kingfish and it had come true on the first two...we just needed to follow through.

On friday we were against Shutter Up in the Gauntlet. This was our third year in the final four, but no final appearances and this year was to be no different. In August wahoo are key and we never have had too much luck with them. We had prefished our area the day before and when we arrived the fish had moved. It took us till 10 to find the fish and then it was steady kingfish action until 2 when we ran south. We ended up catching kingfish from 16 to 40.1lbs. for a total of 98lbs. Right before we ran south we actually had what im 95% sure was a small white or maybe blue up in the spread out in 225ft. off Jupiter Inlet. That was it for fish for us, just a bunch of bonitas and small kingfish to end the day. Shutter up fished south of us and even though we had bigger kings, they were able to throw two tunas with their four kings to kick us out of the Gauntlet. I guess wahoo are not a factor when the tunas show up. They would eventually win the Gauntlet the next day, hats off to them, all you need to do in the Gauntlet is catch enough to beat the team you are against that day and anyone can win. It is actually one of the best format tournaments out there, even a boat from tampa, Smoldering Bullets, got down to the round of 8 this year having never even fished this area before.

On saturday our plan was to be the same but we had a bad fuel issue, that caused the us to not have the speed or ability to rely enough on our ability to make the run and still get back. We stayed off boynton and fished. We were really in a bad mood at this point, we knew the kings would snap up north and it stunk we couldn't get to them. Well after an hour and a half off boynton and nothing to show we moved north of the inlet and found some kingfish biting out deep. We averaged 10-15 bonitas for every kingfish and by 12 we had five in the boat, and were only sure 2 would weigh. That's when we had a double on the downriggers, one down 100 one down 140ft. The 140 smoked some line and the 100ft bite acted like a bonita really erratic, never taking a lot of line and just kind of hanging out. The smoking bite turned out to be a bonita and our angler on the erratic bite said he thought he saw something long and silver down deep. Well as i mentioned the fish never ran just hung out deep, and on kingfish tackle 20lb. line 30lb. metal leader, it was a really nervous time. We saw the fish again at like 45 minutes, and it did look long and skinny. After that we started to bumb up the drag and at over an hours time the fish popped up on the surface and I stuck him and over the gunnel she came. Its amazing how you can be really down thinking you are completely out of it and just one fish can change the day. The wahoo ended up being 47lbs. and lost out to Pop A Tops wahoo by a mere 6oz..

After that we ran back to Hillsboro Inlet to make sure we would make it to the way in and not have any worse issues. We fished off the steeple, catching bonitas and a sailfish and the problem seemed to get worse at 3 when we had an electrical issue on the boat, so we took our time getting back. We finally got to the weigh dock 10 to 4, and were the first to weigh in a 4 o'clock. 94.5 was our total with four small kings ( 10.1 to 13lbs.) and a wahoo. I guess it turns out that blackfins weren't an issue and wahoo are, its amazing the difference of a days conditions and results. We got home and cleaned up and were chilling on the edge of the pool, when we had heard of Pop A Tops win and that Makin Time had second at 98lbs. Could be really have done that well, well finally at like 7 we finally heard that Native Son had weighed in 94.3 and we took 3rd.

Most importantly we won the Triple Crown with 383lbs. This was the best deal of them all, it would've been nice to take the Hummer, or the tournament, but it was pretty cool to win the whole thing. The Showdown Crown is pretty much the most prestigious award of all the summer tournaments. That's it for meat fish tournaments this year I guess its time to swap out the metal leaders for some mono, it's almost sailfish time.

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Captain Ryan has specialized in offshore live bait, bottom fishing, and nighttime swordfishing. Captain Ryan McBride is a USCG licensed and insured captain. Ryan is also a licensed NAUI SCUBA instructor and tournament fishing angler with wins throughout South Florida.

Contact Info:

Conched Out Sportfishing
Phone: 954-445-1732
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