1rst Place - Randy Norris of Riverside (50 points)
2nd Place - Bryan Ida of Los Angeles (30 points)
3rd Place - Steve Mras of Fullerton (30 points)
4th Place - Craig Smith of San Diego (20 points)
5th Place - Steve Piper of San Diego (10 points)
6th Place - Matt Hale of San Diego (10 points)
7th Place - Rob Baldwin of Simi Valley (10 points)
8th Place - Bill Calhoun of Newport Beach (7 points, guided by Capt. Peter Piconi)
9th Place - Jon Hee of Carlsbad (7 points, guided by Capt. Scott Leon)
10th Place - Norman Orida of San Diego (7 points, guided by Capt. Scott Leon)
Total fish submitted for score: 19; many more were shorts or attacked by seals before they could be landed.
Special Achievement Awards:
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.
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!</p>
We also had special recognition awards for Craig Smith, Randy Norris, and Matt Hale, for their early, strong and continued support for our efforts.
Notes:
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.
The other six boats fished the La Jolla kelp beds, mostly around the area known as the Northwest Corner, and in towards the cove.
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 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 number of bass in the Imperial Beach and Bullring areas, but they mostly short of the tournament qualifying length.
Overall, everything seem to work out well. Remember, this was a catch-and-release only tournament, using digital photographs for verification. As far as I know, this kind of format has never been used 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.
Special thanks go out to Terry Leon (Scott’s wife), my wife Carol, and my sons Joel and Joseph for helping out with the digital scoring, and also to our sponsors: Temple Fork Outfitters, Cam Sigler, The Fishermen’s Spot, Oakley sunglasses, Rio Products, SPOT Satellite Messenger, FishDope.com, SoCal Fly Fishing Outfitters and Skull Candy..
And finally, THANKS AGAIN to everyone for participating and helping us iron out the system. Even though I was pretty busy, I had a great time, and it was wonderful to actually met people face-to-face. At least my wife is no longer convinced that you guys are a bunch of cyber stalkers!
Looking forward to next year! I’ll give everyone a lot more notice. Look for the event to be sometime in mid-late summer, if I can find a weekend without a lot of conflicts.
