Finders Keepers A-TOM-MIK Inv Report

[Finders Keepers]

Pre-Fishing Plan:

Work from the river west on Wed, the river east on Thu and try to find where the fish were holding. Fine-tune the gameplan on Fri during the BFF event, and have a tight program down for the main event on Sat.

Pre-fishing Wed:

Headed to O-town with Kyle (Apple Boy) in the AM and got on the water a little after 5am. Set-up out front of the river over 100 fow and started marking lots of HUGE marks near the bottom. We worked those marks for the first hour or so but couldn't get them to budge, and once the sun came up they vanished. So we started working westward. We worked the 120-300 fow range towards Fair Haven and only picked up a couple small kings, so pointed it north for deeper water to take a look-see out deeper before swinging in to our waypoints near Fair Haven. Once we got out beyond 450 fow, we started marking fish and soon thereafter we had our first major in the boat. We found an area holding fish, but the bite wasn't fast and furious. So we headed towards our prior waypoints and on our way found a nice pod of kings that were snapping. Of course, as soon as we found the fish T-storms developed and were moving towards us, so we called it a day and headed back in. We ended 7 for 12, and never really found the waters we were looking for.

Pre-Fishing Thu:

The current wave forecast for Sat was calling for 3-5's out of the wsw, so with our boat I knew we wouldn't be able to motor far from the river. So I decided to concentrate on the waters out front of the river, starting in tight and working deeper. I was out solo, so it was a 3-rod program: 2 riggers and a wire to start. It was a beautiful morning:

I started out in tight and once again tried to get the large marks near the bottom to go. This was what the graph looked like when I set down:

After an hour of throwing j-plugs, dodger/flies, and spoons at them, I couldn't get them to go (other than one release on the mupped black/green glow NK mags set-up with nobody home) and they again disappeared. So I began to work deeper. I then got a call from my wife who wanted me to come back by 10:45 to watch the girls while she headed to a doc's appointment, so that meant I would have to pull lines at 8:30! Then my probe started acting up and then quit all together! So I pulled both both riggers and went over to a 3-wire program, as I could guage the speed better by reading their pull. The screen was blank as I headed deeper and I could see a huge pack of boats over 400+ fow. As soon as I got to 380 fow the screen began to light up with fish and 5 minutes later the port side deeper diver started screaming! 20 minutes later a nice 16 lb king hit the deck. At that point it was 8:25 and I had to pull lines.

Big Fish Friday:

Our initial plan was to start around 200 fow, work out deep through the area where I caught the 16 lb'er the day before, then work eastward to try to locate the mother-load of kings. The forecast didn't look very good with rain and T-storms forecast along with strong east to south to sw winds, so it was just my brother and me heading out. To our surprise, it was pretty nice when we first got on the water and set-down over 200 fow! Our probe was still out to lunch, so we had to guess at our speed to dial in what the fish wanted. We started marking fish right away and it appeared they may have slid in from the day before. As we set lines trolling out deeper, we ran out of the fish around 300 fow, so we turned and trolled back in and ran out of fish over 250 fow, so we turned and trolled back out running out of the fish around 350 fow... It was apparent the fish were sliding back out, so we kept trolling in a N-S orientation through the school. They ended up stopping in the 450-600 fow range and we worked a small area area where they seemed to be concentrated. We picked up a fish almost every pass and they were quality fish in the upper teens and lower 20's. At one point, the fish seemed to be higher in the water column, so I started bringing in one of the wires accordingly, and "POP!", the wire went completely limp! A fray in the line had broke and we lost the entire set-up! After re-rigging the wire, a little while later Jeff was rigging the probe rigger when "CRACK! SPLASH!", the port side high diver set-up was gone!! The rigger rod holder had broken clean off the rigger!! As luck would have it, the port side rigger rod started to weigh down - the rod had gotten caught in it! We slowed up and very carefully brought the rigger rod in and retrieved the wire set-up! We ended up with a pair of low 20's as our two biggest fish for the BFF event totaling 45.5 lbs which landed us somewhere around 12th place for the event. Only 19 teams weighed-in and there was talk of a tough bite. So since we had gone 9 for 12, (our top 6 would have been about a 130 lb box), we were feeling confident for Sat. That evening, we gased up the boat, went to Lowes to grab a hot air gun, and installed a new antenna on our probe rigger (hoping this would fix our probe issues).

Sat Main Event:

My brother and I were joind by Kyle and Gary (our observer). At 5:45 we headed out and lined-up at the front of the pack by the lighthouse. Once again, we were the smallest boat in the fleet and ready to rock! When Tom fired off the rounds all the teams took off and we headed right back to our honey hole from Fri. It was a quick ride out with only a slight chop from the south and we sat down over 300 fow. The screen was blank, but we weren't too worried (yet). As soon as we hit 400 fow the screen lit up with fish and then the portside lower diver got hammered and started peeling wire!! My brother was on the rod and it ran out over 500 ft of wire before slowing down and we knew we had a good fish on. It took some time before we got it behind the boat and it looked HUGE!! And not ready to hit the net, so Kyle got on the kicker throttle just in case the fish wanted to dance, I was on the net, and Jeff was bringing him in. It ended up being a 15 minute cat and mouse chase at the back of the boat, as this fish was not going to give up! Several times it tried to swim under the boat, towards our other lines, etc. and Kyle was dynamite on the kicker thrusting the boat forward to keep the fish behind us. Finally the brute hit the deck and it was cheers and high-fives all around!! This thing was a beast and we had our kicker fish! It hit one of our custom Rhys Davis teaser heads behind a black/green dots spin doc (our hottest set-up the last month or so). After setting back up we attempted to snap a quick picture of Jeff and the huge king, but the rigger next to me popped! I grabbed the rod, set the hook, and a decent Coho came flying out of the water right behind the boat! Soon thereafter a nice 14 lb coho hit the deck! Set back up and were able to snap a few pics:

After that it was a slow pick and we would hit one more in the mid-teens, dropped one around 14 lbs right behind the boat when the hook came unbuttoned, and had a few short hits on the wires that didn't hook up. After 8:30 we continued to mark fish, but the bites stopped. We continued to try one thing after another until we had a stack of gear in a miriad of colors in the back of the boat! We then tried working some new water a bit further east, but we started to run out of the fish and we didn't want to leave fish to hopefully find some others, so we turned and went back. Then we tried going a bit deeper, but again ran out of the fish and we decided to turn back and keep working them. On our way back to our honey hole we finally hooked up again with another good fish with under an hour to go. 20 minutes later an upper teens king hit the deck. That one hit a Captain Valium spin doc pulling a jawbreaker sushi fly. We set back up hoping to get one more in the box, but it wasn't meant to be and at 2pm it was game-over and time to head in.

It was a bit of a bumpy ride in as the wsw wind started to really blow. But we made it back with plenty of time to spare and headed to weigh-in with our cooler. Quite a few teams had weighed in before us, including Son of a Gun who was sitting in first place and had the largest fish so far with a 30.06 lb'er. When we weighed in, our big king tipped the scales to 31.64 lbs and we took over big fish! Our 4 fish box weighed in at 76.16 lbs and put us in 3rd place overall! But there were quite a few teams yet to weigh-in and with only 4 fish, we didn't think we had a chance at staying top 3, and maybe not even top 10, although it appeared as though the whole fleet had a bit of a struggle. We eventually dropped to 8th place as the last teams weighed in and our 31 lb king ended up being the largest fish!

We grabbed a bite to eat at the picnic lunch and shot a few team pics and Tom shot some pics of us with the largest king:

The banquet dinner was great and there were many stories being told under the tent of fish that got away, "if only's", and lots of laughs. At the awards ceremony there was a little mix-up between us and Son of a Gun with the biggest fish award, but that got straightened out afterwards. Congrats to team Praying Mantis for both the Big Fish Friday and Invitational wins!

I would like to once again thank Tom for putting together a great event that we are definitely looking forward to doing again next year!

[Gill-T]

Nice detailed report.

[tangleweed1]

Nice job!!!!!!

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[blueghost1]

Great report and nice fish!

[REELJERKS]

Once again, we were the smallest boat in the fleet and ready

I have you on video shooting across our bow, at a safe distance, flying! you may have been the smallest boat there but that is one fast boat you have. Nice report and congrats on your finish.

[bout time]

Congrats Tim !!! Great Job as always

[fast and silver]

Good job Tim, Jeff and team, cant wait for some more friendly competition in fair haven

[A-TOM-MIK]

Great Report, nice job also

Tom

[Finders Keepers]

Once again, we were the smallest boat in the fleet and ready

I have you on video shooting across our bow, at a safe distance, flying! you may have been the smallest boat there but that is one fast boat you have. Nice report and congrats on your finish.

Thanks Mark! I'd love to see the video sometime! We were also shooting video and probably have you coming out behind us! Once I have a bit of time, I will post the video on Youtube and put the link on here.