* 2012 Mexico Beach Ling Ding Tournament- April 6th - Sat. April 21st. ( Fri. Sat. and Sun. only, except for final weekend)

 * The 8th Annual Mexico Beach Offshore Classic  Fri. and Sat. July 27th and July 28th. Captains Party is Thursday   evening, July 26th at Toucans, Mexico Beach from 5:30pm to 8:00pm CST. 

* 16th Annual (2012) MBARA Kingfish Tournament
This annual event is scheduled for August 25th, 2012. 

Mexico Beach Marina and Team EdgeWater Power Boats Inaugural BayPoint 40/40 Year.

After several days of preparation, we fueled up the Edgewater 38 CC & left the dock around 3:30 PM and headed south trying to find an eddy near the weather buoy that we liked on the ROFF's chart. We were able to move fast which was a big advantage, we could cruise at 40 mph and the boat could do around 65 mph. Around 6:30 or so we found the eddy covered up in bonito & blackfins, possibly some yellowfins. Bait was everywhere & one whale was amongst the tuna. Put out the tuna gear & just could not keep large bonitos off, found a massive floating log outside the schools and made a few passes and pitched some livies but no fish on it except some small cows and hardtails. There was a whale shark that passed under the boat at the tree which was neat to see. Kept a couple dolphin and moved on to find a small tree floating.

First pass hooked up on a half way decent bull, threw him in the box and put out some wahoo gear. On the third pass we sped up to about 14 knots and nailed a wahoo. At this point it was dark so we headed to swordfish grounds. Green water from the Mississippi had covered up all the usual swordfish grounds, so we were trying a non-traditional area that had nice blue water 150 miles southeast of the pass.

Put out the hydro-glows ( thank you hydro glow )and had some small baits into the lights, also had a good amount of flying fish which we scooped up in the net for bait. Put out a mix of squid and live baits and waited. We had a few strikes but no hook ups, about 3 am we had our first good bite on a jack we had put down to about 300 ft but we lost it. We had one more bite on a dead bait and something hit a flat lined flier but that was it. No swords were caught by any boat in our tournament.

At daylight we moved north and found a real nice weed line in blue water, we were around 125 miles offshore at this point. Weed line had alot of bait on it. We started picking off dolphin at a pretty good rate, but they were all cow sized. Pitched livies in bigger patches with same results on fish size. After a couple of hours we decided to make the run north to where we caught the bull & wahoo. When we got to that area, the water had changed color and did not look very promising. We trolled for an hour or so and decided the best option would be to target some wahoo closer in off the ledges. We did not have enough gas to go back out to the blue water with the weedline & still make it back to the docks so this was about our only option. Found some scattered grass with some defined around the ledges but grass was dead, no bait, etc. After trolling for a while we finally hooked up twice in about 284 feet, packed it up and headed for the weigh in station.

Wahoo & dolphin were 3rd and 1st when we weighed, had good live television time for about 10 minutes on the local NBC station which they also had streaming & on the jumbo screen. When the dolphin weight was announced had a big yell from the crowd which was cool, they were engaged in the event. The paper said they had a crowd of 5000 at the peak on Friday although seemed smaller to me, Saturday was absolutely packed & they stopped letting people in because it reached capacity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0UiTIJD8WA). I took that with my phone camera. Wahoo got knocked out quick but the dolphin hung on for a while & I think we ended up fourth place dolphin.

Bay Point did a great job running the tournament and we were welcomed with fresh tuna, dolphin, and marlin off the grill when we pulled up to the weigh station.

Was a fantastic event & we had a great crew that made zero mistakes, we just did not find the big fish we were looking for. The photographer from the tournament is sending us pictures of the weigh in and WJHG is sending me a dvd of our interviews and weigh in coverage. Here are a few pics we took from the boat. Thanks to Edgewater & Layer 3 for sponsoring a great team and also thanks to my best bud from high school Captain David Proctor for running the boat and putting us on the fish!!

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Mark Adams  for:

EdgeWater Power Boats and
Mexico Beach Marina - Yamaha and EdgeWater Power Boats
3904 Hwy 98, Mexico Beach, Fl. 32456
Mail: P.O. Box 13117 Mexico Beach, Fl. 32410
(850) 648-8900 Fax(850) 648-8382