[Bret]

Day one, with lots of anticipation and excitement, the crew, consisting of Jerry(snagged) Scott(headshot), Brandon(Pope), my wife Betsi and myself, broke the jetties about 545am to be met with some nasty confused seas.. we put the tabs down and eased out the best we could headed towards baker.. Tucked in behind a sportfish and were able to pick up a couple of knots. About 3 miles short of double yellow , we see a small weed patch and decided to drop down and see if anyone is home.. Jerry puts on his Oti Jinkster jig and does his special jigging down method and gets bit right off the bat.. Get it to the boat and it’s a nice Jack Crevalle. We were thinking about releasing it and decided to put it in the box anyway. I was quite certain there was a Jack division, but left my rules printout in the truck. Not much else going on there and we made some bait at double yellow and left there and put out the wahoo spread and trolled for a little over 2hrs before one of the el cheapo BPS mauraders got hit.. Scott brings in a small wahoo. Cool… That was the only fish we caught on the troll that day. We hit the baker rigs and drop some livies down for Ajs, we get bit twice but missed them and had another cutoff to a toothy critter. We head in on day one and decide to go by the weigh in and see what was on the board.. Jerry had his 19.3lb Jack Crevalle in 1st and Scott had his 12lb wahoo in 2nd (only for a minute)

Day two was predicted to be worse than day one but we were pleasantly surprised to be met with much nicer seas. We get past the first color change and high speed trolled(12kts) some wahoo lures for the next two hrs with no results. We hit a couple of bottom spots and got our 5man limit of snaps in short order. Brandon picked up a really nice mangrove snapper. Headed offshore on the troll again for another few hrs and nada. Stopped at some rigs and hand fed some undersize ling, hoping that their mama would come out and get her some.. but it never happened. Headed in and discovered that one of the unexpected huge waves we came off of on Friday. had done in my transom. We cleaned up and headed to dinner and were surprised that the Jack had held up in 1st . The 2nd place Jack was the same weight but 1/4in shorter..
We always have fun at the Roundup, but it was nice to have someone on my boat win a divison of it. We have been fishing it for years and it goes to show, it’s better to be lucky than good….. LOL.
Wanted to say thanks to the guys at OTI for hooking us up with some gear. Your tackle is “Top Shelf”. And thanks to my crew.. We will be back next year with a new transom(and hopefully a new pair of 175 suzis)

 

[Pope]

This was an awesome trip. There is nothing like spending the day on the water with friends. Man I miss it already! Lets get that transom hemmed up, mount some zukes on the Licker and do it again. That sort of sounds like what I heard last night now that I think of it...

 

[Snagged]

Bret,
If your not coming down soon I'll send this trophy to you, as the captain it's your's.

 

[jaredchasteen]

Pope either your head is Huge or those are small fish.....Lol

 

[Pope]

They were and I just ate them. Seriously, two minutes ago I ate the little denizens.

 

[MrBill]

I'm sure you guys had a blast. Fishing the roundup is fun. They used to fish on Thursday and Saturday. Friday was a day off or was used as a weather day if Thursday was too rough. Fishing two days in a row is tough. Especially if you do all the work yourselves like you guys. Believe me, I did a bunch of times.

Load up all the gear, pack it to the truck, get ice, get bait, load up food, tackle, ice, food, float the boat, fish all day, load the boat on trailer, fuel it up, wash it, clean fish, clean tackle, unload boat, pack stuff back to house, shower, go to dinner, drink, get a few hours sleep, gather up all the same crap again and repeat all of the above one more time.

I used to have about 6 trophy's from that tournament. I think they got tossed during a move. I remember catching the only sailfish one year. I also caught my first GOM blue marlin during the tournament. I have a lot of good memories from the Deep Sea Roundup. I'd even fish the outboard tournament the next weekend. Same amount or work and even more fun than the Roundup.

See those Cabo flags flying in the picture of Snagged with his Jack. It was a new Cabo Express a dealer was selling on that boardwalk. If fact, that whole boardwalk was full of new boats for sale. I walked over to the boat and was checking it out. I had a good enough buzz going that if a salesman would have approached me, I'd probably be hunting for a slip right now.

Here's a pic of the boat I used during those tournaments. I still own it. This is a recent photo. It's still in great shape. I visited it twice this past week. It's lonely. If I ever get some free time, it's going to hit the water. I've gotten spoiled by going out on other people's nice boats. I love just walking on and walking off.

 

[Snagged]

MrBill,
I'm sure there are a few people who be glad to make sure your boat isn't lonely and left on shore when the other boats are having fun.

 

[Bret]

Mr Bill, I love those old robalos. they are tougher than we are by a long shot.
I had a 1980 18ft that I fished my 1st roundup in .. We made it out past baker and got spooled and broke off a couple of times and nearly ran out of fuel and coasted to the fuel dock... man those were the good times.. Nice boat, I really hope you get to run some of that fuel out of it.. YOu can come by the barn and siphon my fuel out.. it wont be going anywhere...

 

[bpitcher]

Way to go on the win guys!

 

[MrBill]

Mr Bill, I love those old robalos. they are tougher than we are by a long shot.
...


They are good boats. Foam filled, solid and cut through the seas very well. Not a dry boat in heavy seas, but I'll take less pounding over wetness. I also need to re-power. Early last year and all the buzzer's in world were going off. I just disconnected the oil reservoir and put oil in fuel tank like the old days. As long as the engine is pissing good and has smoke coming out of the exhaust I'm satisfied.

The best thing about this boat is the fish box. I've never seen a box as big as this one. I can put 250 pounds of ice in it and another 500 pounds of fish without a problem. It's 7'6" long and 19 inches deep. It's insulated on the sides, and bottom. The top is not insulated. I also have a 40 gallon live bait well built into the hull near the transom. The boat actually runs best when the bait well is full.

When I bought the boat new, I purchased a rocket launcher from GS. He only used it one year and just traded up to a larger boat. I love rod holders. I can't stand my tackle hitting each other. I can put 11 in the rocket launcher, 4 in the tower, 4 in the top gunnel's and 6 more on the sides of the console. That's 25 rod holders. Believe me, I've had them all full. Here's some pics of the rod holders.

 

[Bret]

I like that setup.....