Supefly Results, upcoming fishing

The last two days I fished in the Superfly tounament, the last of the tournaments for this year until the newly-minted Sugarloaf Showdown in November that the LKGA has put together from the 14-15 of November to benefit the Guides Trust Foundation (GTF). Until then, I’ll be fishing a fair amount and report back here. This coming week I’ve got a couple days with John O’Hearn in pursuit of the 4 lb permit record that eluded us last week. Following that I’m with Simon and Kat for a day on the 16, and then in October Kat and I are headed to Belize. I have time with Steve in the glades (finally, we hope, we’ll be able to put the 6 lb tarpon record to bed) in November and again in December, and Fitz and I are trying to figure out a way to get to the Bahamas in November before the Sugarloaf Showdown in November. Busy times, lots of fish to catch!

In recent news, the Superfly tournament was yesterday. Justin Rea ad Cal Collier, Jr. destroyed the competition, posting a tarpon, two permit, and a bonefish to win the event. Drew Delashmit fished with Mark Cooper, catching three bonefish, beating Aaron and me for runner-up by five minutes. The Angling Company would like to extend a very respectful hats off to both of these teams, particularly Justin and Cal.

Our fishing went thusly:

Day One (prefish day)

In a period of fishing marked by thunderstorms and cloud cover, we searched for someting to put on our scorecard the following day. In 8 hours of fishing, we spent maybe 4 of it running around. What we found in the end was a few bonefish, as well as a single shot at permit. The tarpon we never could find, and after a long day of hard looking it was nice to catch a few bonefish toward the end of our practice. We learned mostly where not to go the following day, and hoped for clearer skies for the competition.

Day Two (tournament day)

Early, as is almost always the case in this tournament, we tried to capture a tarpon. The fish were hard to find, and when we did they allowed us two bites before receding in to the mangrove forest. I jumped the first one off quickly, and the second stayed connected through the first bit of freak-out, giving us a small window of opportunity to grab the leader before it re-freaked. In this moment we elected to back away from the fish, both ours as well as the others that were still hanging nearby, hoping to preserve the calm for a possible double capture to start the day. This was almost a good call, as the next jump we survived. The next one, however, made clear the fact that we should have been a little more aggressive: the fish rattled its way to freedom and we were left without a tarpon for our scorecard. Aaron and I looked for another two hours, in vain, never seeing another tarpon. With that, though we didn’t know for sure at the time, our fate was sealed. Without a tarpon we wouldn’t slam, something we knew was a distinct possibility for another team given the increasingly ideal conditions. We burned time in our pursuit, finally giving up and looking for permit.

Our first stop gave us two shots, neither one of which worked very well. I had another shot at a tailer at our next stop, then caught a bonefish at a little past 11. We continued to look for permit and bonefish, and had one more permit shot that came close to working before we saw a large school of bonefish. I caught two back to back, and then we continued in vain to look for our permit until lines out at 3.

I’d like to thank Aaron for a great pair of days, and I can’t wait to fish this tournament again next year. Proper respect as always to Justin and Cal, and Drew and Mark as well. Tuesday and Wednsday with John in pursuit of the 4 lb permit record, I’ll report back.

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