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It has always been a dream of mine to write my own story of winning the rings after reading the stories of others for many, many years. Winning the rings has been a super humbling and gratifying experience. For the Saltwater Shootout, we had to start the day slow trolling because there was no wind. We made a couple of passes o the Jupiter ledge, landing around 80 lbs of kingfish. The wind started to blow, so we fired three kites out, still o Jupiter. Within the next hour, we were able to upgrade two of our kings on the drift. We then decided to go tuna fishing. I was catching tunas during the pre-fishing week, so I knew exactly where I needed to be to get that done. The first bite was an amberjack which was strange because I didn’t catch one of them all week while pre-fishing for the tournament. The second bite was a jack crevallle. Again, we didn’t catch one of them during the week of pre-fishing. I was thinking, “Uh oh, I hope my tuna luck didn’t change.” After that, it was on! We landed four tunas in the next 20 minutes for over 95 lbs. Then we moved back to the ledge. Our goal was to chum up cobias while still fishing a full spread with the hopes to upgrade our kingfish total. After an hour, we caught three cobias and upgraded two of our kingfish. By this time, it was around 2:30 pm and we figured we had time for one more drift. We knew we had a good total of 200+ pounds, but to win any of these events you generally need to have a spectacular day to feel confident heading to the scale.

On the final drift, I hooked a 40+ pound king on the kite. After a few minutes into the fight, the fluorocarbon broke in a weird spot unexpectedly. It was a big letdown! As Eyton was breaking down his kite a couple minutes later, a 40 pounder basically eats it out of his hand. After that fish hit the deck, we knew that was going to be a tough weight to beat. Our 249.1 pounds ended up being enough for first place, making it a dream come true. That was my first time winning first place in a PBSC tournament. – It is truly an honor to come out on top while fishing against the BEST in the BIGGEST meat fish tournament of the year!

Going into the Saltwater Slam, we knew we needed a top ten finish so we would be in good shape heading into the Saltwater Showdown. Pre-fishing was tough all week because we couldn’t dial in on any quality sized kingfish, but we were still on the tunas and knew they shouldn’t be a problem. We started the day fishing inside the ledge, along with about 25 other boats. Sadly, we could only manage about 60 pounds of kingfish in two hours, so we said it was time to tuna