Showdown Crown Champions

fish. This time, we spent the next 6 hours catching 3 tunas as they certainly weren’t as cooperative as the Shootout. However, we were thankful to get the 3 out of the 4 that we had hooked because we knew this would place us in the top ten finish that we needed. We were lucky to weigh 106.8 pounds, which put us in 5th place for the Slam and exactly where I wanted to be heading into the final leg of the series.

The bite leading up to the Saltwater Showdown was really tough. We couldn’t dial in quality kingfish, but we knew that Jupiter would be our best bet to have a good finish. We slow-trolled the entire day as the bite was terribly slow for the first 3 hours of fishing. At around 11 am, the bite started to pick up. We caught a 24 lb king and a 23 lb king within 30 minutes. Then we got the bite we were looking for! We had a 40 + pound kingfish near the boat, hooked on the top of the head. We knew we couldn’t put too much pressure on him, and after a 3-minute fight, a bull shark ate what would’ve been our winning fish. We regrouped and reset, putting the baits back out. We caught another king in the low 20s and then were lucky to get another big bite. This time, we were able to catch the fish in a relatively short manner. After the 34.9 kingfish hit the deck, we knew that we had won the rings. We headed back to the scales around 3:30, not thinking our catch would win the tournament, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that 103.6 pounds was enough to take first place, allowing us to win 2 of the 3 events in the Summer Series. It was definitely a ‘prestino’ day for the SLOB City crew and one that we will remember forever.

Captain Carl Torresson, SLOB City