Quick update here on how we did in the Mazatlan ElCid Tourney on the C-Bandit.
Once again our team consisted of myself, the owner, Jim Jenks, Captain Cammy Garner and our awesome deckhand from Mazatlan Jose Alvarez.
Day one brought killer glassy conditions with high expectations as the fishing had been pretty decent with a very decent number of blues being hooked prior to the tournament.
This tournament is one of the best run and most enjoyable tournaments of all of the billfish tourneys IMHO due to the format and the way it is run as it has lots of nonstop action in it and the point system is set up very very well, also this tourney is mainly (over 90%) a release tourney.
The point system works as follows:
Sailfish (the prodominant catch) are worth 100 pts released
Blues/Blacks must be over 225lbs to be boated which are worth 2 points per pound up to the minimum 225lbs and then worth an additional 3 points per pound for every pound over 225lbs. So you can see that a 300 - 400+lb blue or Black can really put you way in the lead and rack up some serious points for a team!
Ok, on to day one....... we began fairly quickly getting our first release (sail) early on and then we had a fair shot at numerous other fish during the day but the damn sails can sometimes be tricky little shits as they tend to mouth the bait alot, not to mention we were just having a terrible time keeping the hook set in the fish on this tourney! We ended up going 3 for 10 on the first day with myself loseing 3 fish.....gawd was I disapointed in myself!!!!
Also of note was that during day one we had one of our rigs set up for blues go off and we had just started getting our guy ready for the chair when this fish came just smoking out of the water and it was a solid 400+lb fish which would have given us some serious points and pretty much won the entire tourney for us as well as taking the daily for day one, but as fate would have it it wasnt meant to be as it came off shortly after the hookup!! Did I mention that the dailys were $78,000 per day if you were entered in all which we were!! Oh we were bummed about that fish.
Day two we ended up stacking together a 6 fish day and doing quite well although we still had numerous other shots at fish which we fell short on
. All in all day two was good though.
Dat three we started out totally on fire with fish comming up in our jigs consistently up untill about 10:30 or 11ish and if you would have asked me by 10:00 I would have bet big money that we were going to have a easy 8+ fish day, but guess what? As 11:00 rolled around the bite totally shut down for us and we could not raise a fish if our lifes depended upon it for the rest of the day! We ended up with 5 fish that day which in the end placed us in 3rd place and just behind my good buddy Bryon Bingham who runs the SeaCall.
Once again the SeaCall took the most money in the tourney by taking the day three daily as well as sinching 2nd place which earned them $96,000+. Had we on the C-Bandit released just one more fish we would have taken 2nd, but instead we had to settle for a 3rd Place and a check for a little under $7000. What pushed SeaCall ahead on day three was a 247lb blue that they boated that gave them some big points.
Team Tenacious took 1st place with 2000 points
Team SeaCall took second with 1417 points
Team C-Bandit took 3rd with 1400 points.
Below are some pics from the tournament. (I will be adding them shortly)
Team Tenacious
Morning lineup
87' El Vato
120' SeaCall
Team - On Site
Rigging Ballyhoos
At 87' the El Vato can scoot!!!
Team C-Bandit
Team SeaCall
Me & the Boys from the SeaCall
The unknown fisherman
!
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