Penn-Jersey Saltwater Anglers - Sixth Annual (2008) Offshore Bragging Rights Tournament Results

	Tournaments

2008 Offshore Bragging Rights Tournament

Rules . . . Weigh In Form

Current Standings:

Tuna Division:

First Place: Ron Kovler

77 pound bluefin tuna, July 18
50 pound bluefin tuna, July 18
106 pound bluefin tuna, Aug 24
Total stringer weight: 233 pounds
We've lost count of how many OBR Trophies Ron has held over the years, but once again, the tuna trophy is safe under his care!

One of Ron's three bluefins.

Second Place: Ray Hombach

88.8 pound yellowfin tuna, Aug 2
82.5 pound yellowfin tuna, Aug 2
60.8 pound yellowfin tuna, Aug 2
Total stringer weight: 232.1 pounds
Ray Homback combined a inexperienced crew, a massive lightning storm, water spouts, and despite all that was not going in his favor, still brought home a great catch!

Third Place: Bob Ahrendt

72.5 pound yellowfin tuna, July 18
128 pound bluefin tuna, July 18
open
Total stringer weight: 200.5 pounds
Bob Ahrendt gets into the game with two of his three fish stringer, including perhaps the biggest fish taken in the club year to date, with a 128 pound bluefin.

Fourth Place: Lee Burden

78 pound yellowfin, July 26
57 pound yellowfin, June 19
61 pound yellowfin, June 19
Total stringer weight: 196 pounds
Lee tells us, "We left Wildwood on Saturday June 19 at 4: 30 am. and headed to the Wilmington Canyon. Calm seas and light breeze. Started to troll five miles short of the Wilmington tip at 8:30 a.m. Trolled the east wall down then turned toward Spencer Canyon. Halfway to the Spencer, wham! Tuna hit six of our seven rods at once!"
"We boated three yellow fin, 53 lbs, 57 lbs and 61 lbs. One spit the hook, lost one in the running gear, and one snapped the line on our light 20 lbs outfit. They hit on rainbow spreader bars, green machines and a cedar plug. No more action the rest of the day. Trolled up to the tip of the Spencer and headed for home at 3:30 p.m."
"On the way to the Spencer we had to send a crew man overboard to cut off a hundred foot of rope that fouled our running gear and cost us an hour of fishing time. Fifteen miles from the inlet we ran right into a storm with high winds, torrential rains, lightening, and hail. Yep I said hail!"

Fifth Place: Kurt Henjes

51.5 pound yellowfin July 12
45.5 pound yellowfin July 12
35 pound yellowfin July 12
Total stringer weight: 132 pounds
Kurt left the dock around 12:30 am Saturday and headed to the Toms with Neal Phillip, John Henjes and Jon Funk. Had lines in around 6:15 am and within 45 minutes had 3 bites, but only one came tight. Lost a 50 lb class yellowfin right at the boat on the leader when the leader hit the trim tab. They went on and converted the next four bites into fish, including a double header. Finshed with 4 YFTs from 30 to 52 lbs.
Kurt shows off the 51.5 lb fish in the cockpit while offshore.
Kurt's crew of Jon Funk, Neal Philiph, and John Henjes are showing off their fish. The group picture has all 4 we caught, including 45.5 and 35 pound fish we weighed in, plus the 51.5 pounder.

Honorable Mention: Open

Total stringer weight:

Shark Division:

First Place: Greg Mulligan

Mako release August 8 (100 points)
Hammerhead release July 12 (10 points)
23 Brown sharks released July 12 (230 points)
24 Brown, hammerhead and one blacktip shark releases on July 25 (240 points)
Total stringer weight: 570 points
Talk about a guy who deserved to get a trophy! During Greg Mulligan's first year, he didn't enter the tournament, and went to catch more sharks than anyone else, by a huge margin! This year he was sure to enter, and nailed his first PJSA OBR Trophy! Congrats Greg!

Went off to the mudhole on Aug 8 ... slow pick, got a bullet mackerel and chicken mahi. No other knockdowns. Dropped the chum bucket over the side and seconds later a mako swims up, around 80 or 100 pounds. I butterfly a bunker and throw it over to him,.... he swims away and bumps the bucket as it is drifting. I finally get the bunker in front of him and he eats it and runs 10 feet then spits it out, I get him to eat it again and same thing, spits it. I am yelling to my guys to grab the mahi and throw it at him, so I put it on a 50 and send it his way and he eats it and we are hooked up. He grey hounded once and peeled some drag then we got him up to the boat, leadered and snapped a few pics and sent him off and swimming to eat some more mahi and get a little bigger.

Greg Mulligan had an incredible day of shark fishing and moved to first place with 23 Brown Shark releases and 1 Hammerhead for a total of 240 points on July 12! He then followed up that trip with a trip on July

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Friday July 25
I had Frank (28), Russ (24) and Lance (21) from McGuire out for a bluefin troll and shark trip Friday July 25. We left the dock at 8am, got ice, a bucket of bunker chum, a flat of macks and a flat of bunks and headed off. On the way out, we ran across a few pods of bunker getting harassed and snagged a few.We headed off and put lines in at humpty dumpty (about 16 miles off) and trolled for two plus hours without a touch,…. Water was around 71 degrees and pretty clean. NO life on the troll.
The guys were good sports, but I could tell they were starting to get a bit bored so I reeled in the lines and headed to the spot I wanted to shark fish on the 20 line. We put the bucket out, the long line a deep whole skirted bunker, the mid line a skirted butterflied mack and the short line a live bunker next to the boat.
After about 20 minutes I am starting to get concerned and thankfully the live bunker rod starts screaming and we are on! I grab the rod crank down on the fish and the rod breaks where the butt attaches to the base of the reel seat! Unreal! I put a belt on Lance (the 21 year old full of p!ss and vinegar) and tell him to have at it!.... He proceeds to work off the crippled outfit and actually gets the brown to the boat and we leader it and release it. From there on, the action picked up.

The next livey to go out gets eaten and it is Russ's turn and we put him on another brown shark which he struggles with but manages to get next to the boat. We then put Sergeant Frank on one that he fought for a while on the way to the boat. I started to think we had something else like a thresher given that it was going on longer than anticipated. When we got it up to the boat, it was the biggest blacktip I have seen in NJ, around 5.5' or 6 feet. Pretty nice. Cut him off and went back at it. From there, we stopped using floats and weights and just started freelining bunker plugs back to the fish, and were getting double headers and even a triple header or two for a solid three hours. I started running out of rigs, so I was rerigging when I had lulls in the action, and proceeded to go 24 for 39 on browns, blacktips and spinners, officially running out of all of my shark hooks by 4:45pm. These guys, who were used to catching large mouth bass, small mouth bass and catfish, had a memorable day aboard the Filthy Animal and one even went so far to say that it "was one of the best 10 days of his life." I am happy he said that given that he is 21 and getting shipped off to Iraq on Aug 14th!

Weather was good, action was constant,…. I had plenty of country music on my iPod playing for them all day along with some US military honoring tunes by Toby Keith (American Soldier and Courtesy of the Red White, and Blue), and these guys had a blast. It was a great trip and I am very happy to have been able to take them out.

Second Place: Bob Ahrendt

Mako - 102 pounds (102 points)
Mako released - 100 points

Total stringer weight: 202 points
Bob Ahrendt, acting on some fresh intel of where the Makos were hanging out, ventured out with a crew, including Dave and Nico Locandro, Al Gillen and Jeff, on June 14. After putting a small, legal BFT into the box, the crew set up for sharking. Bob then added some of his "secret sauce" to the chum slick, and two minutes later, Nico was hooked up with his first mako, and his biggest fish ever! About 25 minutes later, the mako was in the cockpit of the Lucky Lady, and the crew prepared to set up again. The chum was deployed, Bob dumped some more "secret sauce," and like clockwork, the crew hooked up with a second mako. About 20 minutes later, this second fish was released.
Nico Locandro tangling with his first-ever mako!
In the door!
Second mako - clean release.
Crews of the Lucky Lady at weigh-in. You can tell by the huge smile on Bob's face that he is happy!

Third Place: Ray Hombach

Brown shark release June 15 (10 points)
Two blue shark releases June 15 (20 points)

Total stringer weight: 30 points

Honorable Mention: Open

Total stringer weight:

Dave Kirk, Tom Jordan, and crew
Technically, this is not an honorable mention because Dave is not entered into the 2008 OBR tournament, but because this was the first mako brought in by any PJSA boat (that we know of), it deserves mention here.

Congratulations guys!

Marlin and Swordfish Division:

First Place: Bob Ahrendt

White Marlin Release (100 points)
Total Points: 100
Bob Ahrendt had his heart set on winning the tuna trophy, yet he came up with only two qualifying tuna, and all he needed was one scrawny 40 pount yellowfin to win that category. While giving it his all, instead he released this nice white marlin, and in the process, snapping up the otherwise-open Marlin category, finally getting his name on a PJSA ORB trophy!