My Fishing Adventures
By Christopher Sprague, Jr. Angler-Team Tuppens, Contributing Writer
This month I fished one tournament, the OAPB. This was part of the SKA league and Angler Armory fishing divisions. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and got ready for the long day that was ahead of us. We loaded the boat and immediately started heading out the inlet in pitch dark. This was by far the scariest run out of Boynton Inlet because a sandbar was directly outside of the opening, which meant that we could hit bottom at a fast speed and have relatively no vision because of the darkness. We braced for impact as we were heading out, but we were lucky and didn’t hit the bottom. That day was rough and extremely cold with 4-6 foot seas and an occasional 10-12-foot swell. We headed to Jupiter and waited for lines in at 7:00. We immediately set our lines out after and then waited for a bite. Hours passed, and without any kingfish, we moved spots. We then set our lines out at a new spot where we heard there were fish. Finally, a screaming run! We tried getting all our lines in, but since we were missing teammate Billy Brodbeck, we were unable to work all together and fluently. Once we got all the lines in, the fish tail whipped the line and it was gone. We kept fishing at the spot with nothing to catch other than a baby barracuda. It was now 2:00 and we had to be in by 4:00. We were a long way from Pompano which was where weigh-in was at. My dad was beginning to give up, so I reassured him that we were going to get a big one, and that Team Tuppen’s crew never gives up, we fish till the last moment. Not 10 minutes after I said that, we heard the reel scream. It was a big one. We fought it to the boat for around 8 minutes, which is a lot slower than normal since we were missing Billy, but once we got it to the boat, Jason yelled shark! A few seconds after, he realized it was a big kingfish and NOT a shark. Once it was close enough, my dad gaffed it, but we realized that the gaff broke. We ran and got the other gaff, and luckily the fish was hooked well. My dad was able to get it in the boat, we screamed in joy! The hook of the broken gaff was still in the fish!!! We then immediately put the throttle to the max speed and ran to the weigh-in. We got there and the fish weighed in at 43.3 pounds. It was a great start to the SKA, Angler Armory, & we got the team 3rd largest fish, and I got top next-generation angler.