Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pop A Top puts it together in winning Saltwater Slam
Sometimes when a fishing team seems destined to win a tournament, everything goes right.
That’s how Capt. Skip Dana’s Pop A Top finally won the Mercury/SeaVee Pompano Beach Saltwater Slam on Saturday.
“The Slam is normally our worst tournament,” said Dana, who had previously won the Saltwater Shootout and the Saltwater Showdown. “I don’t think we’ve ever done better than fifth in the Slam.”
He said the difference this time was catching cobias of 27.1, 16.7 and 15.3 pounds. Those unexpected 59.1 pounds, along with four small kingfish and two dolphin, gave Pop A Top a total weight of 138.9 pounds and $17,385 in winnings.
“If it wasn’t for the cobias, we would’ve been in third, fourth, fifth place,” Dana said.
“It’s hard to target cobias, unless you’re fishing on a wreck. We were in the middle of nowhere and dropped baits in and caught cobias. That’s how it goes.”
Makin Time/Living Water was second at 113.7 and won $8,162. Offshore Warrior was third at 113.2 and won $16,586 thanks to a 41.5 kingfish that tied for the biggest fish of the tournament with a cobia caught on Wild Kat.
Dana said all three cobias, three of the kingfish and a dolphin were caught in the first hour slowtrolling live goggle-eyes in 105 feet off Juno Beach. He fished there to get away from other boats.
“The bite’s been pretty slow out front, so we knew we were going up to the north,” he said. “So we ran north and stopped a little short of Juno and set up and immediately like 10 boats stopped around us.
“We didn’t want to fish in a crowd and ran like 2 miles north.”
When the fishing slowed, Dana called Steve Fishman of Makin Time/Living Water, who said they were catching fish off the Hobe Sound Loran tower.
“We were just picking at them, one after the other,” Fishman said. “When Skip called me and said he needed a fourth king, I told him where we were.”
Dana, who had called Makin Time/Living Water “all morning when I was on the fish and they didn’t answer, so maybe they were getting bites,” said when he arrived in Hobe Sound, his team immediately caught a 14.2 dolphin and then whipped around and got a 10.4 king.
“It wasn’t the difference,” Dana said, “but it helped a lot.”
Homer Schmidt of Pop A Top was the top male angler at 69.9. Lori Hargrave of Offshore Warrior was the top female at 51.5.
Trace Bishop of Ice Box was the top junior at 38.5, followed by Jack-Ryan Naumann of KERI-N-ON at 29.7 and Lucas Gracias of Ice Box at 27.2. Bishop and Gracias helped Ice Box to a 10th-place finish and a victory in the Non-Pro division, which was worth $3,080.
Fisher Niemann of Cache Money/Bionic Bait was the top pee wee at 91.7, followed by Parker Steel of Cold Steel/Native Son at 69.3 and Daniel Accardi of Sir Reel at 59.7.
Crescendo had the biggest dolphin at 21. Get R Wet had the biggest tuna at 29.4.
Joey Lacalamita caught the 41.5 cobia on Wild Kat and, like Dana’s cobias, the fish was an unexpected bonus that was worth a total of $9,481.
Jim Ruback said Wild Kat was running off Palm Beach when it stopped and the melted chum that was in the chum bag in the back corner oozed out the scuppers.
“The cobia swam up between the motors,” Ruback said. “We pitched it a sardine and a goggle-eye, it looked at the sardine and ate the goggle-eye. Twenty minutes later, we got it in the boat.”
Fabrizio Cozzo