Team Double Bounty wins fishing tournament that helps bring in donations for children
Peter Smith of team Double Bounty knew what he wanted to bring as his entry in the fifth annual Yellowfin Charity Classic.
“Nerf guns,” Smith said. “I thought about, what if I were one of these kids? What would I want? And Nerf guns are always fun!”
Hosted last weekend out of the Bradenton Yacht Club, the “Fill the Fin” tournament asked participants to bring toys as their entry fee. Along with donations from guests, each toy was used to fill a large Yellowfin offshore boat. The toy drive let anglers such as Smith enjoy the day on the water without the pressure of big money entry fees and instead come together for a good cause.
“It’s different, and that’s why its fun. We still took it seriously but didn’t put pressure on ourselves to go after big fish,” Smith said. “This tournament was a numbers game, so we wanted to get good fish early than upgrade from there.”
The late season tournament was an all catch and release, photo submission tournament. It would take the biggest combination of three redfish, three snook and three trout in inches to determine the winner.
Smith, along with teammates Tyler Kingree and Lucas Engel, started their day early as they would for any other tournament. When they set off at 4:15 a.m., the temperature was a chilly 51 degrees.
“We got bait like normal and then the shotgun start was at first light,” Smith said. “It was a cold tournament. We had our wading gear with us and were planning on it but felt like we didn’t have enough time. We weren’t seeing a ton of fish in any one spot so kept running and gunning, fishing big areas on the trolling motor.”
During prefishing Smith noticed that it took a little while for fish to get active during the cold mornings. He thought their guaranteed fish would be redfish and set off first for the drum species.
“We were confident in our redfish,” Smith said. “We ended up catching them real quick and got something on the board to start the morning.”
Smith’s team landed redfish of 33.5, 31 and 27.5 inches early in the tournament.
“After that we went for snook and it was a weird bite for them. They were scattered and kept us moving around to get bites. We got a 27-inch here, then a 28.5-inch there and finally a 30-inch snook. Our goal was to make sure we got nine quality fish first, and if there was still time we would try to upgrade.”
With their snook and redfish on the board, there was one species left, trout.
“We didn’t get any monsters and only caught about 10, but they were decent fish,” Smith said. “We’ve learned from other tournaments trout fishing can be tough and they can make or break it. We were happy with a 18.5, 18 and 17.5-inch trout.”
A total of 231.5 inches took first place for Smith and team. For first place they were awarded a Simrad unit and JBL head unit.
“There were a lot of great anglers who came out for this cause and we were happy to do well,” Smith said. “I told my guys there was some serious competition like TJ (Stewart), Beau (Bell) and Rats on da Cheese who always get good fish. We’ve been putting in a lot of work and time, and it feels good for it all to come together.”