This was the first year for the new Game Changer in the Oregon Tuna Classic tournament and with only one tuna day under her belt at all, she did great as did the crew. One advantage the new boat provided was the ability to take a 6th team member, and we were lucky enough to have Eric Jutila join the team for the tournament – we learned a lot from him and would not have ended up with the fish we did without his guidance. Despite jumpers around, troll fishing was tough (normally our “go to”), so we spent most of the day jigging and using dead bait. 17 fish and only 2 on the troll (generally the opposite for us).
After a less that stellar Big Fish Friday (we had a 22# fish, which wasn’t that far off the winning fish, we only got 5 and 3 were small) where we fished up North, and good reports from down South, plus a flat ocean, we decided to go further South than we have ever fished for tournament day which turned out to be the right move. 62 miles each way to the “Pig”, but lots of big fish. All 17 of our fish were over 20#, also a first for us. All in all we can’t complain, in the last 5 years our total lbs (top 5 fish) would have won the tournament, so congrats to the teams that had even higher totals. We felt like we had a competitive # but obviously lots of big fish around this year.
