Thursday, November 17, 2011

PCCA starts off new 2011/2012 season

After a couple of months of boat and lodge maintenance we have ALLURE back in the slip and SAILFISH OASIS LODGE open for business. A successful start for both as well with great fishing aboard ALLURE and a large group of happy punters leaving the lodge after the weekend's kick off to the new season.
To start we had fishing onboard ALLURE owner Hill Dishman along with Chief Tauzin and Andre Feucht making up the team. A practice day on Thursday Nov 10th had us pushing up the eastern edge of the pocket scouting around and looking for the bite for the coming days. It was a slow start though we got into some good water and reasonable action later in the day with 11 sails raised and 5 releases from 8 bites. That evening at the pre-tournament meeting it was decided to mix things up as Hill Dishman had to fly out Sunday making points to any angler filling in for him that day ineligible. So, I spent the weekend down on the deck as an angler while Capt Hill ran the show from up top for the first 2 days of the tourny and mate Marvin Avila ran the boat on the last day.

Some of the fleet leaving out day one of the PCCA.
We got off to a reasonable start on day one notching up 5 releases before mid-day, things slowed down a little from there on in though ended with some good fishing out there with boats releasing 11-13 sails a piece and a couple of blues as well.

Andre took some time out to catch lunch on day one.
The bite picked up some on day two with boats releasing up to 16 sails, on ALLURE Capt Hill got us into some good action with 9 sail releases and a big Stripey in the 180lb range. On top of that there was another stripped marlin and blue marlin released for the fleet.
With Hill departing and Capt Marvin taking over the bite had pushed further still off-shore. Another great day out there with some boats hot and the majority releasing under 10 sails, we released antoher 9 on Allure and took some time out of the day catching more big mahi's and about 8 tunas.....

Chief with one of the 8 tunas boated for the day.
So, another successful tournament for Joan Vernon and the Guatemalan series of the PCCA with 346 sailfish, 3 blue marlin and 2 stripped marlin released over the 3 days for the 11 teams. The PCCA series raised over $25,000 to be donated to the Billfish Foundation for ongoing billfish research and conservation so well done Joan Vernon. Congratulations to Capt Chris Shedder and Team OBX on winning the Guatemalan leg and team Southern Pride for taking out the over-all Grand Champion title.
At SAILFISH OASIS we hosted 9 official observers for the tournament and 5 anglers, all had nothing but high praise for the excellent food, great accomodations and party atmosphere. Check out the new web-site www.sailfishoasissportfishing.com
Fishing for sails and marlin has continued over the last few days to be good and there is a great tuna bite as well out there. We have availability so check out the new web-site and get in touch. We are looking forward to a great season ahead!!

No comments: