# Reel Jam Wins Blackfin Tuna at Florabama!!



## rustybucket (Aug 18, 2011)

Wow, what a trip!! Lots of ups and downs on this trip but in the end it was fantastic!

This was our second tournament, first was the International last year.

So, last Saturday I'm at the boat prepping for the tourney, fire the generator up, runs like a champ, flip the switch to go from shore to gen and NOTHING happens... turns out the generator backend was toast. Ordered a new/rebuilt unit from broward armature in Ft. Lauderdale. It arrived Thursday morning (the first day of the tournament). We scrambled to get it installed, fire it up and it's good to go. Pack down final ice and food and head to the capts meeting at Florabama....

So... we pull up to the florabama dock to sign out at the captains meeting Thursday night. We get registered, sign out, and when we get back to the boat something just doesn't smell right. I pop open the bilge and there is diesel fuel EVERYWHERE!!! Turns out a crush washer on an injector on the Generator had failed and was misting diesel out the side of the return line. Of course I don't have one on hand. So, we shut down the generator, and instead of heading offshore as planned, we limp back to the dock in Pensacola.

Up at daybreak to try to locate the part, with some wisdom and guidance from Old Flathead, we found it at the Kubota dealership (our Westerbeke 7.6 BTD uses a Kubota D600B engine apparently). $10 later we have 3 new crush washers. Hour or two to install and we are back on the water by 10am.

After loosing the entire first night of fishing, our crew was pretty down-trodden, we re-worked our game plan, left the sword gear at home and headed toward horn mountain for blackfin and yellowfin.

Water was beautiful at horn, but we weren't marking any sizeable fish (not to say they weren't there), and couldn't get anything to hit a jig. So after a couple hours we made the call to head to Ensco 8505 which is about 7miles away.

Got to 8505 and are marking better fish, but same as horn mountain, still couldn't get anything to bite. Made the call to move to a drillship nearby, got there and were marking GOOD fish and watching people all around us land fish... finally the guy that was cooking us dinner said screw this, let the cook show ya'll how it's done... 2 drops later he had the first blackfin in the boat :thumbup:

From there on out, with the skunk off the boat, it was non-stop. Pretty much every other drop or so we were hooked up. Almost got the blackfin spinning reels spooled a few times as there were some larger yellowfins in the area that seemed to like the lighter flouro leaders on the small spinners.

Ended up getting two nice yellows while chunking.

At sunup we trolled for a few hours and then headed toward the hill.

Took first place in Blackfin tuna with 25lbs and some change in the Florabama!! Also took 4th place in the Offshore Slam division, just 10lbs out of the money!

The big yellowfin was almost 60lbs.








So... I guess the moral of the story is don't EVER give up... would have been real easy for me to throw in the towel last saturday when the generator crapped it's pants. Would have been even easier to throw in the towel Thursday night after the capts meeting. But like my wife says... I'm hard headed, failure on this trip was NOT an option! 

Turned out to be a fantastic trip, lots of memories made, lots of good stories that will be told for years to come!!!

BTW, if anyone finds a drone drifting near horn mountain let me know! One of our crew thought his drone was a submerisible!


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## bcahn (Jan 10, 2013)

Way to go capt awesome trip with cool pics to share!


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## rustybucket (Aug 18, 2011)

A few more pics!



Ya know... cleaning fish isn't so bad after all! 


Fun with the first place awards!


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## rustybucket (Aug 18, 2011)




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## Bodupp (Oct 3, 2007)

Way to overcome adversity and get a check. Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. :thumbsup:


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## Tiretyme (Sep 29, 2014)

Way to grind it out and make it a successful trip - good job!! Maybe you got Murphy off your back for rest of the summer!


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## Frenchy (Oct 2, 2007)

"When going through a storm, keep going" W. Churchill
Way to go, thanks for the report.


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## WhyMe (Apr 21, 2013)

Nice.
Whyme


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## Kevinwwings2 (Mar 3, 2016)

Perseverance Pays off. Great work and appreciate the report. If you're around this coming week and you see "Flying for Fish" a light blue CC say HI. We will be fishing Mon-Tue, and Thur-Fri. Nice Engel you have there, I have one just like it, along with 2 other smaller ones.


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