March 4, 5, 6th...Bob Lewis Sailfish Challenge

[Canyon Runner]

Friday the 4th we started out late due to rigging up for the tournament, but decided to get some fishing in before the afternoon bait catching session. We started fishing by 10am 2 miles south of Fowey. Immediately we were greeted with a double header that ate the long and middle kite baits. 2/2. We then made a move a south again due to a nice north current that pushed us past fowey. Upon letting the last line out we quickly jumped off a single and released a single 3/4. Just before 2 we made one more move that would be our last drift and had consistent action again going 1/2 making out total for the day 4/6 in only a few hours of fishing! With the fishing looking fairly good tournament day we decided to load up on bait at Bug Light. Anchoring up with about 8 other boats was a breeze and we quickly filled the well with 12 dozen large pilchards and 8” threads.

Saturday the 5th we only had a short run to start fishing and we set up shop 3 miles south of Fowey, just south of where we had our bites the day before. We saw plenty of action for the day, but our ratio was the problem, pulled hooks and a few broken lines rounded out our sub par performance for the day and resulted in a 3/8 fish day. Most fish were caught on flat lines and multiple fish in the spread happened on every drift. Oh well, we’ll get them tomorrow. All our bites were between 120-150’.

Sunday the 6th we found ourselves right off south beach due to the higher number of boats we found where we set up the day before, seemed we would rather be a little north of them to get a earlier shot at fish moving through from the north. Just outside 10 minutes of lines in we quickly made work of a double and we were 2/2 by 8:30. However that proved to be our only two bites until 1PM when a single came up which made up 3/3, but not enough to make a showing in the tournament! Congrats to L & H, Freedom and Get lit and the rest of the top 5! All our bites were in 130’ today.

Capt. Justin Nighan
Canyon Runner Sportfishing