The Final Showdown: Our Quest to Win the Florida Spearfishing Tournament {The Waterman Games Pt 8}

We’re nearing the end of the Florida Spearfishing Tournament, and I’ve now climbed to first place down here in the Keys.

With only a few days left in the game and out of around 100 players, I was tied with 2 other guys with 16 fish, and each of us only needed one fish to win.

I needed to land my final fish which just so happen to be the most difficult fish in the game: the Tuna. Either a blackfin or a yellowfin.

It was ironic that I was the sponsor for the tuna category for the game, and I hadn’t even yet got one in 275 days of playing. That’s how difficult it is to get one.

I wanted another shot in the deep gulf, and ultimately my yellowfin tuna. This time, I decided to try out of Destin, instead of Pensacola, since it’s just as far away from where we wanted to explore, and it was the off-season in Destin. That means it’s the cheaper, much less busy season of the year.

I’d never really ever explored that area, but I’ve always wanted to. I rented a place for a month on the water.

I’m a little burnt out from month after month of moving around and diving so much but in good spirits.

We head out of the inlet and are a good 10 miles out into our trip when I needed to make a bathroom break. I’m leaning on the motor doing my business and I see a small oil slick coming out the back. That’s odd… I’ve never seen that before…

We need to open her up and make sure everything is good. And. WOW. We have a major problem. There is oil everywhere. We decided to call it, and head towards camp.

Damn! Is this how the game was gonna end for us? Another motor problem? I didn’t have any mechanics this far north that I could normally call on, and Destin is so far away from the area I normally fish. There was no way I could take my boat to any of them.

And this wasn’t a minor problem. There was oil EVERYWHERE.

After talking to a number of people, I find out that Bass Pro Shops was the biggest Mercury dealer in the area. But every time I called them, I couldn’t get through to anyone.

I told everyone to get dressed, we were going down there to see if they could help us. And I wanted the twins front and center for this.

We get to Bass Pro Shops and there are 3 men at the front desk. I ask them if they’ve ever heard of me or the Fisher Twins, and they had not. Well, let me explain who we are and what we’re doing… hoping that our story would trigger an interest for a bit of free publicity. And it worked.

They said that they would move some things around, but we needed to get the boat to them ASAP, and that’s exactly what we did.

They had us completely fixed up in the same day, within a few hours. And we were able to pick the boat up and get back into the action. Like a well-oiled pit crew at NASCAR, they were there for us. And it couldn’t have gone any smoother.

The second day we head out to the FAD, and scanning the area, we’re not seeing much action.

In these vast blue bodies of water, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find fish. The fish are never right on the FADS.

We spent the entire day jumping from FAD to FAD, and sadly Day 2 of our Destin trip ended up a total bust.

We make it to the first FAD. As we pull up we see that there are fish EVERYWHERE.

This was a good sign. Not only did we find some fish, but we found them early on in the day, so we had enough time to put some work in.

We jump in and all of a sudden we see wahoo everywhere, and Christine lines up on a school, but then doesn’t take the shot, because she didn’t want to spook the fish, allowing Victoria to get her wahoo for the tournament. I yelled at Victoria: “There’s a wahoo! Get one!”

She throws her throw flasher and dives down and lines up on a fish. I couldn’t see the fish, so I didn’t think she was close enough, but she fires and the wahoo takes off up to the surface. The chase is on.

She gently pulls on the fish to secure it. It felt good once she got ahold of it - making this trip worth her while… and getting her a lot closer to the top-2 position, as a wahoo has a lot of points being such a long and slender fish. Just after Victoria shoots her wahoo, Christine shoots a nice mahi.

It wasn’t a fish she could enter for the game, since she already had a large mahi, but it was a nice fish to put on the grill.

I finally find where there are some tuna, and I dive down to 107 foot and see a massive school of blackfin tuna. Everything is perfect, and I’m about to line up for a shot for my final fish of the game…. And… just watch the film lol