Website: http://blacktipchallenge.com/
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The Blacktip challenge 2014 found yours truly less then prepared with other business and family obligations affording me little spare time to properly prepare for the three day sprint style shark tournament.Our bait situation was less then expected but thank God my brother George who buys and sells seafood was able to secure 25 lbs of fresh mackeral for our team. Our other baits were 3 fresh dolphin carcasses ,2 fresh bonitas ,1 -10 lb barracuda and the rest of our bait was of the frozen type which we left for last with no better results.The SFSC club had four teams representing it in this years Blacktip Challenge and two of those Teams were sweeping the competition until the very last night.There was tension as tournament organizers realized the possibility of a complete sweep by Teams representing the South Florida Shark Club but despite the cold tension that ensued we prevailed to represent in fine fashion the sport we love .
The first night and then the first day of the tourney saw anglers dealing with some of the most miserable weather conditions I have ever expierienced fishing a shark tournament with rain mixed with cold tempatures and high surf.The SFSC teams weathered the storms and continued to do battle in the less then desirable conditions and on the second day Shannon Bustamante of "Team Hammer N the Phenoms" was on top with biggest shark a 9 foot bull shark,Biggest Blacktip with 6 ft 7 inch specimen and Biggest Blacktip caught on a circle hook ."Team Dirty South" Raymundo Muniz was holding the second place lead with 8 ft 9 inch Bull shark and "Team KEEPING IT REEL" composed of members of the old Team Lake Worth Sharkers had Third Place with a 8 ft 4 inch bull shark. Other very large fish were lost after pulled hooks and nearly empty reel on one occasion,,not every time a monster is hooked will it be landed.
During the three day event our team(Shark Fever) fished three different spots (south)because we knew that trying some of the more northerly big shark locations would spell having to confront bigger then normal surf conditions produced by the nasty combination of cold & freezing rain that came down on us for more than 24 hours soaking every piece of dry clothes in our camp .Our canopy leaked like a sieve after being twisted out of shape by a gust of wind and our dry sleeping bags were soaked after half a day of continuos cold downpours,it felt like a monsoon mixed with the 60 degrees winter temps which made for a very cold wet miserable handful of team mates.Thursday night at 11 pm we'd had enough and had to go home to recoup and come back strong the next day.Our second night at our of our favorite beaches with slightly better baits produced a big ZERO SHARKS for our Team Shark Fever.
In total our Team ended up catching three blacktip sharks for our efforts.We gave it our all,never gave up and fought until the end. I am thankful to our entire team for the super human Jonathan-Tyler and Scott. We want to thank Josh Jorgensen once again for putting together this one of kind sprint style shark tournament.
SHARK ONE
Tyler Parker "the travelin Sharkmen" fights his first tipper of the tourney
SHARK TWO
fighting sharks while trying to stay dry
our second blacktip of the day Jonathan and I pose for picture in the rain with the feisty tipper
SHARK THREE
On the the last day day of the tourney we moved camp and joined Team Hammer n the Phenoms for a final effort to find a monster shark .The long haul to the spot was not what our team was looking forward to but we welcomed the chance to fish alongside some of the best anglers and very good friends and using a fresh caught Jack crevalle donated by local fishing great Jimmy Harris I was able to land my last shark of the tourney another blacktip shark.
Later that night on the home stretch of the tourney Shannon (Seaweed the Kahuna)after doing a 400 yard drop with a big ray was rewarded with a hard fighting 8 ft 4 inch Bull shark that was the last one our teams would catch.I want to thank everyone that fished the tourney and to everyone that came out and fished and broke bread with us.As we were headed home at 5 minutes to 12 pm we recieved word that Adam Lopez of Team KEEPING IT REEL was getting spooled on a Penn 14/0 at that very moment and Josh had been notified by phone but as the spool got to 1/8 full the hooks pulled on the giant fish.End of the tourney .Thanks again to all for your valiant efforts
SOUTH FLORIDA SHARK CLUB -President SFSC-Founding Member est 1983 SFSC-Website Administrator BIG HAMMER SHARK TOURNAMENT -Founder Rene Memorial Sharkathon -Founder NMFS Shark Tagger