# "Reel Fuelish" Pensacola International



## Bluewater Cowboy (Oct 1, 2007)

The Reel Fuelish fished her first tournament this past weekend. I'm going to give the whole story, and it could get kinda long. 
So I get down to Lost Key Marina on Wednesday afternoon amd check on the boat. I don't have much to get ready because I had done all the rigging the weekend before. We fished the past weekend and everything ran great. SO once at the boat I go into the engine room and check all my systems and fluid levels. I start the port engine, then I go to start the starboard engine and she is dead. I check batteries and find one lose connection. I let her charge and she will barely roll over. So at this point I call Ralph at Middleton Marine and he gets me some mechaincs over at the boat first thing Thursday morning. They get started checking and discover that I have 3 bad batteries on the boat. We get them all changed out and go to start the engine and still have the same issues. At this point they start checking thingas with the computer and can't get a reading at all. Once they do a little more research they determine that I have a bad ECM on the motor. They call around and say they can get one from B'ham but it will be 10pm getting to the boat. The owner said get it hear. THe anglers said lets chance it and we go to the captians meeting and put money in the calcutta without a running boat. I leave the captains meeting and go back to the boat and wait on CHad to get there. He shows up around 10 and start to install the ECM. Once installed it want let him flash it, so then he has to install on the port engine and install the information then move it to the starboard. We get all the ECM's hooked back up and crank both motors, the crew is pumped up. After 2 minutes the starboard motor just shuts down. Back to the engine room and determine that the breaker for the ECM only has 5 volts and it should have 24volts. So we run a jumper from the breaker to the battery block and get it running. I have a short inthe wire somewhere. So now its 1230am and both motors are running. I have to say a big Thank You to Middleton Marine for hanging in there and making it happen. They stayed with it to the end. 
Now to the fishing. We left the dock at 1 am way behind schedule for our destination. I start 15knots toward the Ram and at 5am i put it to 30knots and get there a little after 6am. We fish our way south the rest of the day. We worked toward the nautilus and found a nice rip to the east of it. We jumped off a nice blue marlin there. So now the crew is pretty excited. We stayed there for a little while then I decide to push the boat a little and we trolled down to the Hub for the night bite. Once we got close to the Hub we found a beatuiful rip. We were on the rip for around 30 minutes and have a 150# tuna jumped on the teaser twice right off the corner and hit the rigger bait. We fight the fish for 30 minutes and loss the fish to a shark. It was heart breaking. We go to move to the Hub around 7pm and the crew boat calls and said stay away they have divers in the water. I aks for how long and he informed me for the next 30 days. So back to the rip and trolling north. At 730 pm we have a nice hit and were hooked up. We catch a nice rat blue at 830pm. We had to wire the fish in the underwater lights and spreader lights. The camera man didn't get good footage so we only got white marlin credit since they couldn't identify the species. The crew is pumped we just got the first marlin for the boat. We then cook dinner and 10 knot it to the blind faith. We catch one 50# tuna there at night and then off to get some sleep. We wake up Saturday morning and troll back eat looking for the rip and find it 8 miles weast of the nautilius. It was made up nice and we were the only boat on it. Fish it for 30 minutes and hook and release a little white marlin. So we are now 2 for 3 on billfish. THen the dolphin wake up and we catch 7 dolphin with the biggest being 29.7#s. We fish it the rest of the day with no more action. Around 3 we headed back toward the house. We got to the scales and weighed our dolphin and tuna and turned in the releases. It was a great crowd at the weigh in. We didn't attend the awards on Sunday morning because we didn't think we had won anything. We were cleaning the boat and MYles from the Reel Worthless called and said we have won over 8,000 in the calcuatta. I called Kevin with the big game club and he told me we won 2nd in the $300 dolphin and 1st in the $500 dolphin. It made it a lot easier to finish washing the boat at that point. IT was great first tournament for The Reel Fuelish crew. The Pensacola Big Game Fishing Club had a wonderful event that we look forward to fishing again next year. 

Capt. Lee Michael Norris

I will post a video of the White Marlin in a little while.


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## MSViking (Oct 11, 2007)

Wow!! Way to pull one out!! I agree with you that Ralph at Middleton is a great guy to work with! Glad it all worked out for you, I know it had to be major frustrating to say the least!

It certainly sounds like the fish were to the west last weekend as they certainly were not over to the east! Glad you guys got it all running and got your first blue on the boat!!

Robert


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## fishsticker (Jan 11, 2009)

Great report and a good way to end a trip with such a bad beginning


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## hit man (Oct 5, 2007)

Good job Lee...helluva 1st tournament! $8k is a nice surprise


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## Frenchy (Oct 2, 2007)

*great report*

Perserverence is a good quality obviously paid off... thanks for the report, glad to see I am not the only one with mechanical problems, congrats on the catch and calcutta and mostly thanks for the report


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## DAWGONIT (Jan 16, 2009)

Thanks for the detailed report.
Standing by for the pics.


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