Outdoors Column | Fishing tournament raises $2,000 for COVID-19 recovery fund
This weekend was supposed to be the Crosthwait Memorial Fishing Tournament hosted at the Bradenton Yacht Club, but like so many other events it was canceled due to COVID-19.
“Everyone has been going a bit crazy, wanting to fish together,” said Capt. Steve Brownlee, a regular participant in tournaments like the Crosthwait and Fire Charity.
“When Joey Caputo got this together we wanted to do it, not only for the cause but to get out and compete on the water.”
Caputo’s idea was fairly simple for the First Annual Fight COVID-19 Fishing Tournament. The biggest rule was to minimize contact between anglers. Teams met him at the mouth of the river to pick up their measuring board and boat numbers while wearing masks, and there would be no physical weigh in with all pictures submitted digitally. Teams would need to text him the biggest snook, redfish and trout picture with the longest in each category winning as well as a team slam. Entry fee was $100 per angler and fishing would be following a shotgun start until 5 p.m.
By the end of the tournament, Brownlee loved the change of submitting pictures on the spot.
“I wish every tournament would do this moving forward! It was so nice to just turn in the photos and not worry about making it to a weigh-in where you’re normally waiting in a line after a long tournament on the water. We fish in St. Pete so coming back across the bay is not always easy.”
For this tournament Brownlee joined Capt. Marty Slade, his wife Vanessa, and Capt. Chris Wiggins. Slade lives on the water in St. Petersburg and spent the days before the tournament gathering bait.
“He had everything ready the day of the tournament, pinfish and whitebait. We hopped on and ran across for the shotgun start without worrying about much,” Brownlee said.
“Wiggins had been on trout, I had been on snook, and Marty had been on redfish so we had our plan. The problem was there were so many boats everywhere we went, it was more than a holiday and looked like the 4th of July.”
The team started snook fishing, hoping to get that done first in the morning before waters became even busier. Brownlee said it was tough as they caught many between 25 and 30 inches.
“I tossed out a small rod just to see if I could get a bite on the lighter gear. Of course the light tackle was thumped and the drag started screaming. I was palming the spool and the fish went up in the bushes. I jumped out and had the rod tip three feet underwater trying to keep it from breaking.
“I could see the fish when I got up to the bushes about 20-feet away from where it went in. I told Chris to grab the net and he ran out to help find the fish since it was wrapped around a branch. He somehow found it and netted it!”
That snook went 35.5-inches and was more of the size Brownlee was looking for. After getting the first picture submitted it was 10:30 a.m. so they went on to the next species. Wiggins took them to a trout flat where the team landed a 23- and 24-inch trout back to back around 1:30 p.m.
The last part of the slam brought the team to an area of docks. It didn’t take long to get a 31.5-inch redfish.
The team’s total of 91 inches would claim first place for $1,000, and their redfish and trout would take 1st place in those categories as well for $500 each. By tiebreaker 2nd place overall would go to team Low Expectation and 3rd place would go to Pici Team, both on which had 75.5-inches.
Pici Team took biggest snook at 36.5-inches, and a wildcard category of biggest flounder went to team King Kongs Cousin at 14-inches.
Brownlee’s team would donate $500 back, bringing a total of $2,000 raised for the Manatee Community Foundation COVID-19 fund through the tournament.
This story was originally published May 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM.