The Ninth Annual Tournament, held in honor of the late Del Brown, came down to the wire as Justin Rea, angler Greg Vincent, Mike Allen and I [Will Benson] battled it out atop the leader board. With near perfect conditions on day one, Mike and I went four for seven to take an early lead. Rea and Vincent were one of many teams to post one fish after the first day. Day two saw the winds die and the attitude of the fish change. While Mike and I remained confident that our score from day one would sustain through day two, we concentrated on catching a big fish worth 250 points. We did manage to catch a nice fish, which was not quite big enough to score the 250pts, but we remained comfortable with our strategy given our three fish advantage from day one.
Then came the shocker! Day two saw yet another round of teams catch one fish with the big exception of Rea and Vincent who posted a whopping five fish to take the overall lead by one fish worth 100 points. Mike and I clearly had our work cut out for us the following day if we wanted to earn the Grand Champion title. With almost identical conditions as day two, we set out to do what we do best…whack permit! By 9:13 we were back in first place, having caught a fish worth 150 points. Needless to say, we were pumped. We did what we absolutely had to do, and now we just had to hope we could eek it out. Although we found fish and had shots, it wasn’t meant to be. Rea and Vincent also caught one fish worth 150 points to preserve their lead and claim the title. As we shook hands and congratulated each other on an excellent competition, Justin told me how his day two score came together with five fish caught on five different flats. My hat goes of to him and Greg on this point. That is simply good guiding and good angling hands down.
In the end it was truly a great tournament. Such a dramatic finish between two rival Sugarloaf guides is just cool. Congrats Justin and Greg on a great victory. Mike and I look forward to next year’s tourney and the opportunity to challenge you guys for the highly-coveted 10th annual champion title.
W