Ron and Nikki's Blog: 2007 Governor's Surf Fishing Tournament

****UPDATE 1****

Here are the results of the Tournament:

33 bluefish, 3 blackfish, 7 kingfish and 2 stripers out of 1000+ anglers.

****UPDATE 2****

Alright, it's official. Nikki would have won. 7 Kingfish were caught. Men accounted for 5 of them. So Nikki would have at least received third place! DOH!

On Sunday October 7th Nikki, Dad and I went to the annual Governor's Surf Fishing Tournament. We had a great time but holy smokes i think it was August not October!

This year was especially good because of Mom and Dad's new condo in Ortley Beach. It's about 15 minutes from the park. That is great because the Tournament starts at 6am and in past years we would get up at 3:30am. ugh!

This year we met my parents at the condo the night before, had a nice evening, got bait, and got to sleep until about 6am. Still early but certainly not too bad. We got on the beach around 7:30am and got our poles in the water as fast as possible.

The beach is so pretty in the morning.

About 45 minutes into things Nikki said she noticed a bite on my pole but when i looked it wasn't doing anything. I assumed she had just seen the wave action effecting the pole but I decided to check my bait anyway. Nothing seemed unusual as I reeled but when the bait emerged out of the water there was a tiny fish on my rig! Nikki was right! Turned out it was a Kingfish! This was incredibly weird because: 1. it had bitten on a mullet (little bait fish) but typically they feed on worms and little critters. 2. the mullet bait it bit on was half it's size! and 3. the hook was as big as it's head and bigger than it's mouth! I don't know what it was thinking but i guess it really wanted to get caught!

Anyway, this was great because the way the tournament works is there is a first, second and third place for each specie of fish eligible. There would not be many Kingfish caught at all because the time for them being around has pretty much passed. However, I REALLY wanted Nikki to catch something like this because the primary competition is among adult men. There are not only 1st 2nd and 3rd among species but according to child female\male, teen male\female and adult men and women. If Nikki would have caught this thing her chances of winning would have been huge. It was quite good for me but for her it would have been almost a foregone conclusion! I have yet to hear what the women's Kingfish catch was though.

The winner LOL!

Well the day progressed and all we caught were some skates and sea robins that are ineligible for prizes. I guess you could say Nikki won among us though because she caught the biggest fish. A skate that was 4-5 pounds. They look so nasty.

Nikki's winner, nasty right!

Well the Tournament ended at 1pm and all we had in the running was my 10 inch Kingfish but funny as it seemed, I could easily place with it so we went to the ceremony.

Well... I lost by 1 inch! DOH!

My dad kept a couple large sea robins and with my kingfish we almost had a dinner. So we picked up two flounder fillets from the store and made a nice fish fry. Oh well, we didn't get a fishing pole and reel but we had a great dinner! :) There's always next year to get my 4th win hehe.

Nikki eagle eyeing the poles with a judge in the background.