We Win the Pompano Beach Fishing Rodeo

Every year we fish the rodeo with my wife, children and a few friends.  It is a family oriented tournament and everyone usually has a good time.  The field is very competitive and we work very hard to get ready for the two day event. Finally after countless hours of preparation and days of bait fishing we were ready to go. Twenty to twenty-five mile per hour winds and ten foot seas greeted us the first day. Taking our time, we got to the area we wanted to start at and got set up. The day started slow and was very rough! We caught a few keeper kings and saw a big mahi that we didn’t get.  The very next drift we caught a weigher dolphin and things were looking up. Next drift, my daughter Laurel, had a nice fish that was acting like a tuna. After a while we could see Laurel did in fact have a big tuna and that there was a shark trying to get it. I feared the shark would bite the tuna and disqualify our catch. After a few nerve racking moments, the tuna decided to take its fate into its own hands.   Rather than getting eaten by the hungry shark, the tuna decided it would rather jump on the boats engine bracket and dry out! And that is exactly what happened!!!!!!!  Laurel’s tuna leaped on the bracket only to have my thrifty son James standing ready and quickly grabbed the tuna and threw it in the boat. Minutes later James had a big fish on that managed to get wrapped in a competitor's line. I tried desperately to get close to the other boat hoping James would be able to untangle the mess. It was just too rough we couldn’t get close enough and unfortunately the other boat broke their fish off and James was able to land another big tuna that would help us out in the standings! Later in the afternoon we added a couple more tunas that would give us our limit for the day! At the end of day one our team would weigh a limit of kingfish, limit of tuna and a nice dolphin which would be enough for us to be sitting in second place. 

Day two would offer up calmer seas and with a shorter day we would have to fish fast and make our bites count. Right away we caught a couple keeper kings including a nice twenty-five pounder for Laurel. Then we had a big king sky on the left long kite, but got the bait off the hook, before anyone could say a word, the  flatline took off with a big tuna. It was just one of those tournaments where most everything went right and very little went wrong. As my friend Louis says, “When it’s for you…it’s for you. We would finish the second day with another limit of kingfish and two big tunas! After waiting to weigh our fish and coming up with a total of way over three hundred pounds we were declared the WINNERS!!!!!!!!!  It was such an amazing feeling and I was so very proud of my family and my team!  We ended up Top Boat, Top Male Angler, Top Junior Angler and Top Family!!!! A great tournament with my wonderful family!!!!