Call gets Seapremacy a win at Shootout

For many saltwater tournament teams, their most important piece of equipment is a cellphone.

A cellphone can put anglers on fish far better than a sonar unit and more stealthily than a VHF radio.

A phone call helped Seapremacy win the 19th annual Mercury/SeaVee Pompano Beach Saltwater Shootout Saturday with four kingfish and four blackfin tunas weighing a total of 200.4 pounds.

Doing It All/Hard Way, which made that phone call, was second in the 131-boat fleet with four kings and four tunas weighing 189.2.

Capt. Alex Burgess of Seapremacy said his team started the day by catching kingfish while drifting from 140 feet into 110 feet off Delray Beach.

“We had three kings there that were weighers,” Burgess said, “then we got a phone call from the guys on Hard Way. They were catching tunas off the Breakers. We ran up there and caught seven tunas and another weigher king.”

Daryl Deka of Doing It All/Hard Way said he and his teammates were happy for Burgess, who used to fish tournaments with them before putting together his own team and fishing on his 29-foot SeaVee, which he uses to run charters out of Lake Worth Inlet.

“Alex is a friend of ours. You’ve got to take care of each other,” said Deka, who has a 39-foot Contender. “At the end of the day, it was the only SeaVee boat we wanted to win.”

Fishing in seas of 4-6 feet, Seapremacy used sardines on the flat lines and goggleeyes on the kite lines.

“We caught most of our fish on the flat lines,” Burgess said. “We caught three tunas on the kite.

“We had our fish by 1 o’clock,” he added.

Burgess said the size of his team’s kingfish keyed the victory. Seapremacy had kings of 31.8, 26.2, 21.5 and 19.4 for a total of 98.9 pounds. Their 101.5 pounds of tuna included fish of 30.5, 24.5, 23.9 and 22.6.

Seapremacy won a total of $20,160, including $8,000 for first, $5,220 as the top boat in the value-added Bluewater Bonanza and $5,940 in the value-added Ante Up.

Doing It All/Hard Way won a total of $12,042 and, at Sunday’s awards ceremony, donated more than $1,400 to the Children’s Tumor Foundation, which is the tournament’s charity.

Less than 3 pounds separated the third-, fourth- and fifth-place boats: First In Line/Utopia (174.6); Blue Moon (172.5); and Miss Michelle (171.9), which won the Non-Pro division and the Non-Pro Bonanza for a total of $5,275.

For the second consecutive year, Off The Wall won the value-added Pick-3 for catching a dolphin, a kingfish and a cobia to earn $14,040.

D&D was the biggest money-winner at $28,661 thanks to the biggest fish of the tournament. The 41-pound kingfish caught by Jason Popovich won $11,880 in the value-added winnertake-all Bluewater Challenge, $9,563 in The Big Three and $5,468 in the Holy Mackerel.

Danny Castillo of Kimbuktu was the top male angler at 107. Melanie Chojnacki of High Gear was the top female at 65.3. Hunter Irvine of Young Guns was the top junior at 73.4. James DeMarco of Cold Steel/Native Son was the top peewee at 81.1.

Jeff Frost of Lauderdale Marina Fishing Team had the biggest dolphin at 34.3, Bryan Sagar of Reel Addiction had the biggest tuna at 37.5 and Lacy Ingram of Reel Stubborn had the biggest cobia at 29.4.

Bass results

Jon Farmer caught 20.74 pounds Saturday, including the big bass of 8.83, using a Gambler Burner Craw and a frog to win the Everglades Bassmasters of South Florida club tournament on Lake Okeechobee out of Clewiston. Co-angler Nick

Batke was second at 15.63 using a swim jig and Senkos, followed by co-angler Ben

Therrington at 14.41, Dan Potts at 14.17 and co-angler

Duane Payne at 12.

BLUEWATER MOVEMENTS/COURTESY Capt. Alex Burgess, right, and his Seapremacy team with their catch of kingfish and blackfin tunas.