Rockfish Wars !!!

Let me start off by saying WOW !!!  I won the Predator 13 Thank you so much Greg and everyone involved in the tournament,  and thank you to all the sponsors.  What a great time !!! Now the fishing, this was my first time on the ocean, in a kayak, and I can't wait to get back. Jesse, Grimkeeper,  and I fished the rocks and kelp for greenling and lings. Jesse did very well on greenling, and I caught a personal best 29" lingcod. I am totally hooked on the ocean!!! Met a lot of great people, what a great bunch, and at the potluck, the food was out of this world. thanks to all that cooked the fish, they were cooking it as fast as they could, and it was perfect. What a great time, again thanks to Greg and everyone else.
And I almost forgot, we took third place. Jeff and Mike, Congratulations, but watch out next year!!!
Jeff

Congrats on the new ride!
-Amos

Congrats on winning the new Predator!  Thanks for the report Jeff.

Grats on the kayak! I spent half the day cleaning up and putting things away. I am spending the evening with my son and heading to the VA hospital in the morning for a reading on my Echo they did on my heart last month and MRI for my knee surgery. After I get out of the hospital and am in the room I will do a complete post on the event and scores!!

Congrats on the new yak. That's awesome.

Congrats on the new yak, Jeff.  The tournament was a great time, and Trinidad came through with some nice fish even though the 10' @ 10 second forecast was a bit nasty!  The water was sloppy, but it wasn't 10' @ 10 seconds...  More like 4 feet and confused.  Some went out 3 miles off the Head for salmon, so it wasn't very bad.  I fished outside a bit, but the quease was setting in, so I retreated to the harbor and Dom and I enjoyed some light tackle rocky action and he picked up a nice 28" ling.  We turned in 10 fish and finished in the middle of the pack, but we were back on the beach enjoying cold beer and hot BBQ'd chicken by midday.  Did up a little Gyotaku which Cam joined in on.  Looked like everyone had a good time fishing.  We hung at the launch all afternoon eating hot food and enjoying everyone's positive vibes.  The campground scene was totally kicked back and fun, and the fish tacos at the awards dinner were off the hook.  I appreciated the offers to sack out at camp but ended up wanting my own bed, and I'd lost all beer buzz after about a dozen tacos and a couple servings of ice cream with berries.   

Cleaned up gear last night before a really relaxing hot tub to cap off a 21 hour day and was really glad for my own bed - especially when I had to get up and play soccer this morning! 

Great job, Greg and Pacific Outfitters crew.  The Rockfish Wars is a quality event, and I think this year's summerization was a great move. 

 

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1:30am, just got home and unpacked. Had a great time, caught some nice fish, can't wait til next year. Congrats to the top dogs, those were some sporty conditions!

Congrats to the winners on getting it done on a grinder day.  Thanks go out to Greg, Aaron, and Pacific Outfitters for an outstanding tournament.  I really enjoyed the fish tacos and root beer floats.

I plan on putting my new Ocean Kayak I won at the tourney up on the wall in the man cave. 

Order was restored in my fishing universe and I extracted my revenge on my brother who beat me by 3.5 points at GS7.  Fishing was slow but I did manage to land 10  while my brother 5.  Out of our 1102 point total I contributed about 700 and my brother about 400.

Sunday we went out on a charter and had limits of salmon in little over an hour.

Congratulations to the Rock Fish Wars III Team winners, big fish winners and the kayak winners (Predator and model Scrambler XT)!! 

I also want to give a shout out to those who went out on the salt for the first time. It was not epic conditions, 'sporty' I believe is the descriptive word of choice yet from what I heard and have seen posted, it did not detour your ambitions to get out on the ocean again.  Right on!

Greg, good job!  The event went off well. I also enjoyed the relaxed gathering at Emerald Forest prior to the award presentations with excellent fresh fish tacos complimented by great potluck contributions which allowed us all to share our days outing - of course share our fish catching stories too.

Thank you to Pacific Outfitters for putting on the event and to Ocean Kayak, Lowrance and others who donated to event!!

Looking forward to next year!

Thanks Jeff Baker for teaming up with me, I found out 1 week prior that I could fish this. Thanks Greg from Pacific Outfitters for an awesome event, well put together, very professional! Congrats Jeff on winning that sweet yak, that thing is awesome and just begging to be rigged up, love the rail system.

I guess I'll just post my report here:
The conditions were better than I thought they would be. The swells we big but they're really wasn't much wind. After looking at Google Earth I figured out a rough game plan. I loaded the waypoints onto Jeff's Lowrance Elite 5 and off we went. We went north near Green rock on a long reef that went north to south, 35' to 85'. As soon as we got on the spot Jeff caught a 20" black. I then hooked into a fish that came up easy but very heavy. He finally figured he was hooked and ran to the bottom. I had my drag set as hard as my AG6500 would go and I could stop him, tink tink, snap. He broke me off on the reef and my turrets kicked in hard. I figured this was the spot.

We stayed there for most of the day and the swells got bigger and then chilled a bit around noon. I caught several legal lings to 30" and bunch of big blacks, greenie and I found some decent blues for eats. Jeff was able to get a few more big blacks and 3 greenies for big points, well done bro! With a little bit of luck and a good bite, we had enough points to get the win and dethrone Rob and Adam (2nd place) who won this event last year. No simple task, as everyone knows these guys can catch fish. Rob caught a 24" black, nice fish man!

This win was particularly sweet because I used my scampi's and new 8" swim baits with Andy's 6oz heads most of the day with success. Great payoff for all the hard work I've put in designing, testing and pouring over the last 6 months. It's nice to know I made some baits that can catch decent fish consistently. BIG 

I've never fished Trinidad and this place is sooo fish. I can't wait to get back. The campground was awesome, cool little Ewok village. Great layout and amenities, fish cleaning station and proximity to the launch area. All in all it was an awesome weekend, good things....


Mike

yea what mike said. and a huge thanks to my team mate mike for letting me snag the go pro at the awards. I can't wait to try it out. We fished hard and covered some ground mostly to the north. i had to put the rod down and paddle around a few times to reset my stomach. When Mike asked me to team up he mentioned some thing about dethroning the rob and adam express. I honestly didn't we could do it, you guys can fish, but we did and I'm pretty stoked about that. Big thanks to Greg and Pacific Outfitters, all the sponsors, and Emerald Forest Campground for the hospitality. I had a great time and will defiantly be back next year.

Congrats to all and to Jeff and Mike for the win!!

Studs!!

 

Sincerely,

Jim