Best laid plans....Once again, we were so excited to finally have cooperating weather, schedules, and a good crew lined up so we could head offshore and chase the elusive swordfish again.  We had lined up a couple days to fish the Atlanta Saltwater Sporstman Club's Orange Beach Tournament #1. 

Here's a fantastic triple tail that Team Outlaw landed while pre-fishing for the tournament. Congratulations Kerry, great fish!

With a seasoned crew for a change, our hopes were high that we'd soon be wrestling snapper & grouper, trolling for some pelagics at the spur, and overnight drifting for our first sword.  We headed down a day and a half early so we could make bait, deal with any last minute boat issues, and cook for our Captains meeting that night. Well we launched the boat only to realize our bottom machine wasn't working.  Knowing we had the extra day available, we pulled the boat out of the water and headed over to Pensacola to George's Marine Electronics and let them work their magic.  We killed some time at Outcast, and the incredible Joe Patti's seafood market, and soon ran back over to George's to find they had us back in operation. With optimism running high again, we scrambled back to Orange Beach, loaded up with ice & bait, relaunched the boat, and grabbed some last minute groceries for the captains meeting.

We had a great meal poolside at Cotton Bayou Condo's.  Thanks to Scott & Daniel doing all the work and preparing a fine captains dinner.  We got a good start the following morning for the first day of the tournament.  While we had lots of small pinfish, we tried to supplement them with some live bait, but the sabiki's just weren't working.  We detoured back to the pass and visited the bait man.  With a full livewell of bait, I couldn't have been more excited to head offshore.  The seas were 2', things were looking up.  That is until I realized I couldn't get the boat on plane.  The boat was making 18 mph max.  I plugged along playing with the trim tabs, engine attitude, but never could find a balance that would plane out the boat properly. I started playing with each engine and soon realized my port engine had some kind of fuel issue. 

We turned around and headed back in to find some mechanical help to salvage our trip.  I just knew there had to be a simple fix to some obvious problem I couldnt find.  I was so happy when our mechanic discovered our primer bulb had a small leak and that once he replaced it, things seemed fine.  We ran WOT across the bay and were elated.  So paid the repair bill and headed offshore again.  After 20 miles of running, the engine problem returns.  We head back in for round 2 with the mechanic.  This time he hooks up the computer and sees a pressure drop on the fuel pump indicating the high pressure fuel pump was bad.  It ran fine without a load (high rev's in neutral), but wouldn't feed right under load.  The additional bad news was that they didn't have one in inventory, couldn't find one in inventory anywhere on line, and would have to backorder a replacement with Yamaha.  Hmmmmm, are we on plan C now?

With one good engine, one engine running at 3000 rpm's max, we galloped off again at a blistering 12 mph.  We decided to troll the beach and try to pick up some spanish & king mackerel.  We lost one 5-7 lb. king at boatside, and landed a Spanish before it got too late.  At least we got the skunk off us. 

Our plan for day two was to limp out again, this time to some public #'s within an hour or so of the pass.  We'd do some bottom fishing and then work our way back slowly.  We found the public #'s crowded, and had some issues getting anchored, so we headed off to some Trysler Ground #'s I had. 

On our first drop, I think Scott reeled in 3 fish on his multiple hook rig.  We couldn't drop without reeling up fish.  Finally some good luck.  We had loads of short red & lane snapper and small triggerfish.  I don't think I'd ever seen such small trigger.  Dawn & Daniel weeded through and found some keepers.  We even added some odd balls to the catch - soap fish & a speckled hind.  Heck, we even caught a nice 3.5 lb. mangrove on our flat line bait intended for a king mackerel.  Our luck had certainly changed.  We fished and caught fish until 2 hours before weigh in.  We then headed back.  Realizing we had about 15-20 minutes to spare, we put lines in at the whistle buoy and tried to find a king mackerel or some spanish.  We had a bite right away, but it was only a bonita.

Well, we made the best of a bad situation.  We caught fish, had a good time, and even managed to not finish last in the tournament.  I couldn't have been more suprised when they called out our name at the Award Banquet, we had placed 4th in the event.  Congratulations to our crew that fished hard, never gave in, and had such a positive attitude when times were tough.