KEY LARGO, Florida Keys — Team Seraphim of Ocean Reef, led by Captain Jerry Pohl of Miami, Florida, tallied 12 sailfish releases to take top honors at the two-day Billfish Championship, a main event of the Jimmy Johnson Fishing Championship Week that ended March 9 in the Florida Keys.
The Seraphim team earned $405,000 in overall prize money for the victory, as well as authentic, custom-designed Jimmy Johnson’s NBC Championship rings for each team member. [Read more…]
Native Son Wins Sailfish Challenge with Walk Off Release
Four boats make it to final round of $314,000 Release Round Up
Pompano Beach, Fla. (Feb 26, 2019) – Nothing short of exciting and unpredictable with a 52-boat fleet, 466 anglers, 3 inlets and 2 days of competition, the 16th annual Sailfish Challenge was one for the books. The tournament opened with an amazing kickoff party hosted at the International Game Fish Association, charitable beneficiary for the tournament. Within these two-days a total of 427 sailfish were released from Palm Beach down to Miami, with a majority of the boats fishing from Palm Beach to Jupiter. The record setting bite got off to a hot start at lines in on day 1 and stayed steady until the end of the tournament with multiple boats hooked up each day all the way through lines out.
Competition was stiff and the stakes were high with a $639,220 total purse and the $314,100 Release Round Up on a tight line, the first number drawn Friday morning was 1. 29 boats advanced to the second round. At noon on Friday the second number was pulled and coincidently it was number 2. 19 boats advanced on two round 3 where it would take 4 releases or more to make it to the final round on Saturday afternoon. 5 boats made the cut and were only a few hours and 5 more releases away from a $314,100 winner-take-all payday! Native Son, Double Diamond and Chips Ahoy Too all got the closest, each releasing 3 fish a piece in the final round, however the 5-release mark was not met. Native Son went 3 for 6 in the final round, however it was not meant to be. With no winner, the massive jackpot rolls over into the Final Sail tournament in Miami on April 3-7 where it is expected to reach $350,0000! [Read more…]
Meet your next fishing machine! The 2010 Donnie Caison 49’ Custom Carolina Express, “SPARHAWK”, is a true cold-molded Custom Carolina built sportfish. She is a proven fish raiser and tournament champion with a ride and fuel efficiency that are unparalleled for a vessel of her size. “SPARHAWK” is the recipient of meticulous maintenance, continuous custom upgrades, and an electrical refit in 2018 in excess of $300,000. If you are in the market for a beautiful, head turning, hard core custom express boat, your search should start and end with “SPARHAWK”.
Below please find a summary of highlights onboard The “SPARKHAWK”:
SEE MORE ON THE 2010 Donnie Caison 49’ Custom Carolina Express, “SPARHAWK” HERE
Here’s the full Old Salt interview with Capt. Sam at the Fort Pierce Inlet.
by Dale Wills
Singer, songwriter, newspaper columnist, book author, duck hunter and longtime captain – Sam Crutchfield can catch most anything that swims in fresh or salt water. Were that not enough, Capt. Sam is also proficient in Morse code and was bitten by an alligator while wade fishing for bass in a Florida lake. Captain Sam Crutchfield is an outdoorsman in every sense of the word. When speaking with Sam you could hear about most anything – a play by play story of a big blue off Walker’s Cay or about any number of adventures in Florida or the Caribbean. Today, at the age of 79, you can still find Capt. Sam at his local boat ramp fishing in the Indian River Lagoon and along the Treasure Coast beaches almost every morning. “You can never get a missed day of fishing back,” he says gently.
The Young Captain Sam
Born in 1939 in Polk County, Florida, Capt. Sam Crutchfield was hooked on fishing by the age of six. His father had a little boat and motor and would run out of Camp Mack on the Kissimmee River targeting big bass on shiners and artificials. His favorite holes were the Polk County phosphate pits, which according to Capt. Sam, “made the bass really big.” It was here that Sam caught his largest bass to date – a 17.2-pound whopper. Sam recalls how the incredible bass fishing during his youth has changed. “I remember the day they started dredging the Kissimmee to create the canal to Lake Okeechobee. It broke my heart, and it’s never been the same since.”
Captain Sam Crutchfield with his all-tackle 77-pound world record dolphin. It stood for more than decade.
After high school, Sam joined the Coast Guard. “I enrolled in Radio School with the plan to relocate to Fort Pierce to be on the Ft. Pierce inlet. Upon completing my training, I quickly realized Ft. Pierce did not have a radio position. I then selected Jacksonville Beach Coast Guard station to be my new home.” Back then, radio communication was Morse Code (which Captain Sam can still encode today).
Captain Sam’s two day on, two day off schedule in Jacksonville was ideal. “Hunting and fishing was easy with my schedule. In the fall, I would hunt ducks on the land currently developed as the TPC Sawgrass Golf Club in Ponte Vedra, Florida. It was one of the best flyways you could imagine. Widgeon, pintails and teal were so prevalent,” says Sam. “In the spring and summer, I would fish the Jacksonville pier in which I witnessed over a half-dozen fifty-pound kingfish caught.” Sam is careful to note that his biggest kingfish, caught off of Ft. Pierce, tipped the scale to 67-pounds.
A Career in Sportfishing
After his service in the Coast Guard, Capt. Sam finally moved to Ft. Pierce to attend Indian River Community College – and fish. During this time Sam started mating on charter boats. This was the beginning of a lifelong sportfishing career.
Crutchfield earned his captain’s license in 1966. “I started running a small 19’ inboard charter boat with a 70-hp named Lucky. We mostly fished the Ft. Pierce inlet and Indian River Lagoon for snook, tarpon, trout and redfish. I was lucky to be mentored by Capt. Rollin Matheson at the time. He was a big influence on me when I first started,” Sam recalls. “We used all conventional tackle with wire leader. I remember when the first spinning reels came out. Eagle Claw introduced ‘cat gut’ as a type of mono and the spinning reels were awful. They got their names ‘spinning’ because they would spin the line up in a mess.”
Crutchfield’s first charter boat, the Lucky.
A couple of years later, Crutchfield upgraded his boat, purchasing the Lucky Too, a 23’ T Craft with a 225-hp inboard Chrysler. The boat was equipped with two big live wells and two fishing chairs and could take a party of four fishing comfortably. Then, in 1973, he upgraded the boat again with a 30’ T Craft also called Lucky Too with a CAT 3160 diesel engine.
“My charter business progressed to mostly offshore fishing then.” In 1976, Sam purchased a 40’ Warren O’Neal-built boat out of North Carolina. The boat was originally built for sportfish legend Omie Tillet and is still in charter service today out of Oregon Inlet. During the late 70s and early 80s, Captain Sam built a steady charter business from Ft. Pierce which evolved into a world class operation booking clients in the summers to fish out of Walker’s Cay in the Bahamas.
During the fall, Sam was dialed into duck hunting around Lake Okeechobee and Louisiana – when he wasn’t charter fishing his local Ft. Pierce waters. Sam also mentioned he forged a great relationship with his dock partner and friend Chip Shafer during the height of his charter career. “Captain Chip’s friendship has meant a lot to me over the years, and we are still fishing buddies today,” says Capt. Sam.
In 1985, Capt. Sam retired from charter fishing, making the switch to private boats. His first private position was working for Charlie Campbell on the Escape, a 53’ Hatteras out of Stuart, Florida. “I had the opportunity to fish and help Charlie with his hunting ranch in Okeechobee. It was ideal, but short lived,” recalls Captain Sam.
Crutchfield’s largest blue marlin. Caught and released in Walker’s, it was a tank.
Around 1988, Capt. Sam switched gears again and accepted a new captain’s position on the 53’ Hatteras Lillian B. The new job allowed him to return to Walker’s Cay on a regular basis. The position evolved into working on a second family-owned boat, a 60’ Hatteras called Silver Streak. Captain Sam would split time on both boats. This lasted until the early 90s.
Captain Sam recalls many evenings sitting around the dock at Walker’s where he and so many others were, as Sam puts it, “living the good ole’ days but just didn’t know it.” The dock parties at Walker’s and Captain Sam’s love for music eventually paved the way for Captain Sam’s next career – in the music business.
In 1995, Sam finally traded the ship’s wheel for a microphone, jumping full time into his singing career. Captain Sam recalls how Walker’s Cay charter captain Billy Black and friends – and the nights of singing and playing guitar on the dock after fishing – influenced many of his songs. Most of his lyrics were conjured up in the shadow of the iconic Walker’s Cay scale. If you like fishing even a little bit, you can’t help but enjoy Crutchfield’s songs like Trollin, Ugly, The Mullet & The Mackerel & The Ballyhoo and Big Game Fishin’.
“I really enjoyed making music, but didn’t realize that once you start making albums, every year you need to come out with another and another. I decided to quit making music after 13 albums,” Captain Sam recalls. (If you are interested in buying one of Captain Sam Crutchfield’s CDs for the boat, give us a call at InTheBite).
A Lifetime on the Water
Captain Sam’s lifelong interest in fishing proved to be one of his best decisions. “Through the years there were good times, bad times, sad times, and most of all, the wonderful times when good folks got together on a fishing boat to share the fun and excitement of sportfishing,” he says. “Recently on a morning fishing trip a young fella yelled ‘Hey old man, have you fished here all your life?’ ‘Nope,’ I answered. ‘Not yet!’”
Owner Bill Wallace shows us the latest model of the Willy Vac— a system that vacuums up standing water in the trouble areas that every boat has.
Four months ago Captain Wink Doerzbacher walked us through the reconstruction of the 62′ Spencer Showtime!.
Check out our Dock Talk of the finished product after a full sportfish makeover:
In case you missed the first edition, here’s the reconstruction video-tour of the Showtime! from back in October 2018:
by Charlie Levine
Raised in Pensacola, Florida, Chris Mowad, only ever wanted one job. “I was always an avid angler growing up, and the dad of one of my best friends was a private boat captain,” he says. “I thought that was the dream job.”
Chris started working on boats at 14 years old and just 13 years later, he’s running the Whoo Dat – a 58-foot Jarrett Bay owned by Keith Richardson. This is one operation that does not like to sit idly by. Mowad and company left the Gulf of Mexico in January and have been fishing in the Dominican Republic and St. Thomas ever since.
Mowad took the time for a phone call in St. Thomas just after the September moon and the bite’s been on. “We caught 23 in the last seven days,” he says of fishing on the North Drop. “We recently hired a new mate who fished the entire Gulf season and caught 11 fish. We doubled his whole season in a week. You can build a resume pretty quick spending time in hot spots, and the experience you gain is priceless.”
Mowad’s quick ascent to the captain’s chair began as a freelance captain and mate on a handful of boats. He also worked at Outcast Bait and Tackle, in Pensacola, from the ages of 17 to 21. It being a smaller shop, he had to know how to do a little bit of everything. Spool reels, rig lures, you name it. At 18, he got his six-pack license and started running more boats. “I met a lot of local guys who had private boats, and I worked as a captain-for-hire,” Mowad says. “That’s how I got a lot of experience. You learn a lot when you’re managing a different crew every weekend.”
While running the boat and finding fish is the more glamorous part of the job, Mowad is not afraid to get his hands dirty and do whatever it takes to make sure the boat is running properly. “I was always impressed by captains who maintained the boat themselves and if anything broke, they knew how to fix each system,” he says.
Capt. Myles Colley was one such captain that Chris Mowad looked up to. Colley, captain of the Born2Run, is from the same area as Mowad and also started running boats at a young age. “I wanted to kind of follow in his footsteps,” Mowad says. “The part I enjoy most now is that he’s gone from being a mentor to us being in competition, but we still have a good friendship.”
The Whoo Dat is the perfect platform for the kind of marlin fishing that keeps Mowad’s boss fired up. The 58-footer was built by Jarrett Bay in 2007 and when Richardson bought it in 2011, he installed a tuna tower, a second generator, new electronics and a fresh coat of paint. The 1,350-hp MTU 12V 2000s just rolled over 10,000 hours and keep the team on the bite. While the engines keep the team mobile, it’s really the owner of the boat, Keith Richardson, who keeps everyone on board fired up. “He keeps us all going,” Mowad says. “He wants to put up big numbers and is not afraid to fish extra hours. He’s really the hardest working guy I’ve ever worked for and a key part of our program. He’s willing to fish on a different schedule and follow the bite.”
Having the flexibility to move throughout the Caribbean, whether it’s fishing FADs in Casa de Campo, or pulling lures on the North Drop, gives Whoo Dat the ability to stay right on the marlin’s tail. Fishing out of St. Thomas this summer, Mowad and his crew were seeing 10 to 12 blue marlin a day during the peak moon phases in June, July, August and September. It’s been some of the best fishing there in a long time. Fishing alongside his mate of four years, Kevin Alexander, he says they’ve got a solid group of guys on the boat and camaraderie is high.
While they’ve been successful, Mowad is never afraid to ask for help from some of the more experienced skippers. “If you quit asking questions, you quit getting better,” he says. “There’s a group of guys here that have been really helpful.”
Mowad’s plan moving forward is to get boat work finished in October and November then head to Casa de Campo in December and fish there through next April. From the DR, the team is heading back to St. Thomas for the summer. The days can run together, but he’s certainly not complaining. “It wouldn’t be fair to say we work 24-hour days, but there are times it seems like it,” he says. “Keith doesn’t have a problem going for a 15-day stretch and the seas are rough the majority of the time. But you get to learn how maneuver the boat in rough water. If you can catch them when it’s rough, you’ll catch them when it’s calm.”
Charlie Levine is the publisher of FishTrack.com and the author of the book, “Sucked Dry: The Struggle is Reel,” available on Amazon.
Todd Davis won the 2019 Subscriber Giveaway to fish with Captain Glenn Cameron aboard the Floridian, a 60′ Sportsman, out of Stuart, Florida. Congratulations!
Forget about New Year’s resolutions… InTheBite is straight to the point in 2019.
Grab a copy of the latest Jan/Feb Issue, hitting the docks now!
Photo Courtesy of Island Marine Services, Fort. Pierce
DAY 1 RESULTS:
Full results on Reel Time Apps
DAY 2 5:00pm UPDATE:
Photo courtesy of Jessey Rudolph, mate on Grand Slam.
FINAL RESULTS:
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