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The Beyond The Breakwater 3Bs Trial Tournament was held on September 27, 2008. Fifteen contestants fished the waters around La Jolla, down to the Bullring and the Coronados. They found lots of fish (and seals!), but only a minimal number of fish cleared the minimum tournament scoring threshhold. Here are the final results:

Catch Summary:

Courtesy Stephen Mras
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Total Fish Submitted for Score: 19 (4 bass, 15 bonito)

Average length of bass: 14.25 inches
Average Bonito Length: 22.8 inches

Fishing Tactics & Strategery:

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Two boats pre-fished the tournament on Friday Sept. 26: Steve Mras/Craig Smith on Salsipuedes, and Scott Leon with Nick Curcione on Paradigm Shift. Both boats looked at La Jolla and Point Loma. Oddly enough, pre-fishing on Friday was very slow. Even the bonito did not want to cooperate, which raised fears about a washout on Saturday. Fortunately, water conditions changed for the better on Saturday, and the fishing picked up again.

During the tournament, 3 boats fished Point Loma and points south, including Zuniga Jetty, Imperial Beach, the Bullring, and the Coronado Islands (these last two locations are in Mexican waters). The 1rst and 2nd place finishers, Randy and Bryan, were on Randy’s boat, Clouserhead, and fished the Coronado Islands for their fish. Trey Crawford and Matt Hale fished the outside of the Zuniga jetty, and ranged as far south as the Bullring. Bob Day and Steve Piper focused on the Point Loma area.

The other six boats fished the La Jolla kelp beds, mostly around the area known as the Northwest Corner, and in towards the cove. This includes the two kayak fishermen, John Dumlao and Tony Martinez, who launched at La Jolla Shores and made the long paddle out to the Northwest Corner.

Courtesy Scott Leon
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Fishing was pretty good for bonito and barracuda, but most of the barracuda were a bit shy of the tournament qualifying lengths, or were lost to seals. Randy and Bryan found some great bonito fishing at the Coronados, but couldn’t get them in past the seals. They also encountered yellowtail at the Islands, but couldn’t get them to eat the fly.

Calico bass in the La Jolla and Point Loma areas were hard to come by during the tournament, despite an abundance of fish during the summer months. Matt Hale and Trey Crawford found some good numbers of bass in the Imperial Beach and Bullring areas, but they were mostly short of the tournament qualifying length. Matt did manage a nice 16" fish, however.

Clouserhead did a mix of run-and-gun and bait-and-switch trolling in the Coronado Middle Grounds for their fish. The majority of the bonito came while working under birds and breaking fish, while the yellowtail that they encountered were hooked and landed while trolling plugs on conventional gear. They were unable to get other fish to follow the troll-caught fish in to the boat.

Steve Mras and Craig Smith on Salsipuedes took the opposite approach. They mostly stayed on anchor and used a mix of frozen chum and live chum to attract the fish.

Tournament Operations:

Overall, everything ran smoothly. Remember, this was a catch-and-release only tournament, using digital photographs for verification, which, as far as I know, has never been done before in a West Coast salt water tournament. We did have a couple of minor glitches in the scoring process due to a couple of unanticipated situations, but they were resolved quickly.

SoCal Fly Fishing Outfitters in Point Loma provided the facilities for both the Contestant's meeting and the digital "Weigh-in". Peter's store is in a great location for this type of event, as it is located close to both the Shelter Island and Dana Landing launch ramps. We held the awards ceremony in the patio area behind the shop, and it was just the right size for the group we had.

Equipment Notes:

Here is a summary of the equipment used by the top 5 finishers:

And here is the data on the boats used. There were a total of 9 boats - 2 kayaks and 7 power boats:

Special Achievement Awards:

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Longest Drive Award:
Awarded to the person who travelled the further to get to the tournament, based on the distance from their home address to the tournament HQ, as reported by Google Maps®. The winner was Rob Baldwin, with a 157 mile one-way trip. Rob received the SPOT Satellite Messenger, which I thought would be a good thing for people travelling long distances. As Rob said, "Damn! My wife's going to make sure I get the service now!"

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Captain Courageous Award:
Given to the person who showed the most courage/guts/adventurous spirit during the tournament. The recipient was John Dumlao, who entered the tournament as a kayak fisherman, even though he had never caught a salt water fish on the fly before. During the course of the event, he did manage to catch his first salt water fish on fly, a 24" barracuda, plus several others! John received a St. Croix Imperial 9' 8wt fly rod, donated by Bill and Eileen Stroud (Stroud's Tackle), for his efforts.

We also had special recognition awards for Craig Smith, Randy Norris, and Matt Hale, for their early, strong and continued support for our efforts.

Door Prizes:

We had a random drawing for Monsterdog or Straight Jacket polarized sunglasses from Oakley, Outbound fly lines courtesy of Rio Products, and earbud sets from Skull Candy

Looking Forward:

This event was labelled a "Trial" event because I was trying out a number of unusual things for rules, operations, and scoring. Most things worked, some partly worked, and a few didn't work. After the tournament, I held a debriefing of the contestants to get some feedback. Here's a few things we know will be in place for the next time around:

Courtesy Matt Hale
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• We will open up the tippet material to two or three brands of IGFA-class monofilament. Rio and Ande for sure, the third is TBD.
  
  
• Captains or guides fishing as contestants will not be handicapped. However, there will continue to be some sort of handicap for having non-fishing crew on board. The tournament clearly demonstrated that having someone on board whose primary purpose was to unhook and photograph the fish was a definite advantage.
  
  
• We will continue using IGFA rules as the basis for equipment and fishing rules.
  
  
• The next event will also be a single day, but the hours will be shifted a bit to adjust for daylight hours. We may also change the length of the fishing day, but not by much.
  
  
• There was universal agreement to try to keep the event simple and low key.

Thanks and Appreciation:

Special thanks go out to Teri Leon (Scott’s wife), my wife Carol, and my sons Joel and Joseph for helping out with the digital scoring, and of course to our sponsors. Without their support, this event would not have been nearly as successful.

And finally, THANKS to everyone that participated. Your presence was a strong sign of support of what we're trying to do with Beyond The Breakwater. You also helped us iron out the system, and lay the groundwork for an even better event next year. Even though I was pretty busy, I had a great time, and it was wonderful to actually meet people face-to-face. Now if I could just figure out a way to sneak in some fishing during the tournament, everything would be perfect!