July 28, 2012 Huggos Wahine Tournament 3rd Place!

Today, my wife Melissa and her co-workers Jill Spanel, Sherry Denis, Rose Mckinnon and Tanya Posey, fished the Huggos Wahine Fishing Tournament onboard Lepika.  75 boats were entered in this years tournament.  This is an all girls tournament and is one that I look forward to fishing every year.  The girls decorate the host boats and dress up in their hottest “theme” costumes to win money and prizes for the best costumes, best decorated boats and of course biggest fish of the tournament.  The morning started out at 7am as we motored to Kailua Bay for the infamous water fight!  The girls held their own in some pretty hardcore water fights.  One boat had iced water which we quickly backed away from after getting drenched in freezing cold water!  The tournament started at 8am and we ran south and started near a spot where my father and I tagged a 200lb blue just the day before.  We didn’t have lines in for more than 30 minutes before a small blue ate the stinger lure.  My wife Melissa was first up and quickly buckled into the fighting chair.  The 125lb blue gave us some nice jumps far from the boat and Melissa quickly got the leader to me in about 12 minutes.  After taking a few pictures with the fish we released it in good condition.  We worked our way farther south and saw a few other boats hook up in the area around us.  The fish were really tight to the coastline in about 200 fathoms of water so we worked that contour line really hard.  At around noon, another small blue ate the long rigger.  Tanya was up and got harnessed into the chair.  This was the biggest fish Tanya has ever caught and she wasn’t sure she could get the fish to the boat.  After a few minutes she quickly found her technique and got our second blue marlin estimated at 170lbs to leader.  We were now in second place since another boat had also tagged 2 blue marlin before us.  No qualifying marlin (over 300lbs) had been caught yet but a few hours later another boat would land a 401lb blue marlin to take first place and bump us to third.  In the end it was a really fun tournament and everyone had a great time.  A few years ago we also took third so maybe next year we’ll win it!