Pelican Yacht Club Invitational Sailfish Tournament

Hi, my name is Scott Levin from HMY Yachts. We're here at the Pelican Invitational Sailfish Tournament 2018. I spent my career sport fishing around the world, places like Australia for eight seasons, Africa, South America, Central America, all through the South Pacific. I currently have 30 black marlin over a thousand pounds, 17 world records on light tackle, and 12 blue marlin over a thousand pounds. So this year we're fishing on the Champagne Lady, a 68-foot Paul Mann. Mr. Tony Ingram is the current owner. I'm Captain Josh Chaney of the Champagne Lady. Champagne Lady is a very modern, a lot of cherry wood interior, three-bedroom, three-head layout. C32 Acer Caterpillars for motors, 1800 horsepower apiece. We cruise around 32, 33 knots, great sea ride and boat, and it's even more comfortable when you stop and start fishing. The Pelican Invitational Sailfish Tournament is a dead bait only tournament. We do a lot of trolling from Jupiter north. I believe it's everybody's favorite tournament just because of the camaraderie and great fishermen all coming together. Josh is a very important part of our team. Slow down Josh, maybe you'll swim up to us. He has to find the fish, and that's the hardest part. All the boats will line up inside the tournament. The cannon going off is a Pelican Yacht Club tradition. And they will fire the cannon and we'll have a shotgun start. Awesome to be there and everybody gets to see all the million dollar boats and the best of the best trolling boats out of Fort Pierce. Today we were three for three. Conditions were difficult. It was rainy and cloudy and we could not see any of the fish. None of the fish came to the surface. They were all caught prospecting on the dredges today. Top boat had eight that day, so we weren't completely out of the water. It was just awesome fishing day two. We had lots of fish up behind the boat. We had lots of fish up on the teaser. It seems like every time the guy went to the tower, he was yelling sailfish on the right dredge again. It was just non-stop action all day long. Twice we had a triple on. Here we go, go, go, go. There he is right there. We ended up chafing off one of each of those fish and ended up with a double in both sets. Scott, it was awesome for him to catch the double. I'm tight. I got two on it. That was pretty crazy. For me, all I can think about is hooking more fish. That's the main goal. If you're not taking advantage of all the fish, you're not going to win the tournament. Sitting in first place overall that day, but still very nervous of day three because we had to fish against the guy that was right below us. So day three, we had another beautiful day. Before you knew it, we had three in the first 15 minutes of fishing. And then our spot kind of faded off. And we were slowly falling behind and we're getting frustrated. And then around 2.30, an hour left to go at tournament fishing, I made another move. And we ended up catching five in about 10 minutes. Ended up two fish from first place and secured our place for second. But it was an epic end of the tournament and very exciting last half an hour. This tournament was awesome. This is a great feeling to be up there holding second place. We're right there so close to edging out the three-year winter Grand Slam. So I was pretty excited to learn that I had got top angler with 17 fish. We had a great evening. It was a really well done tournament. The Pelican Yacht Club tournament is the best. Everybody looks forward to do that because of the great camaraderie and the great food at night. I can't wait for next year. We're going to be back. I want to just thank Tony Ingram for buying an awesome boat and letting us fish these tournaments. And it's been great. And winning is icing on the cake. Absolutely.