I was teamed with 3 anglers from Texas who had asked me to be the primary angler. Richard Richardson was onboard as the wireman, our Mexican mate Jorge was responsible for the gaff, and Randy Rozelle was at the helm. With such talent on the boat all we needed was a shot.

The tournament included three days of fishing which we took incredibly seriously in view of the prize money at stake. Even the daily jackpots were worth in excess of $380,000! For the first two days we didn't even see a fish. In fact no fish meeting the 300# minimum weight was caught the first day making the jackpot for day two worth $760,000! Not surprisingly we were disappointed when that money was won with a relatively small 325 pound blue marlin, particularly when we hadn't even had a strike. That was the only qualifying fish caught by the entire fleet the first two days. The el nino conditions had clearly dramatically adversely impacted fishing conditions!

Excitement filled the air as the boats raced out of the harbor on the last day of the tournament. With only one small fish having been caught it remained anybody's ballgame to win and there was still more than a million dollars of prize money on the table! We again trolled lures on the Pacific side, feeling that it was necessary to cover a lot of water to find a fish since they seemed to be so widely scattered. By late in the afternoon there had been only one fish boated and two tagged although several others had been lost. Then an hour before "lines out" we had a nice fish come up in our spread and grab the short corner bait which was a huge Coggins lure dressed with a pair of 14-0 hooks. It disappeared after the strike despite not really pulling much drag. Almost instantly the long corner went off only this time it was a small striped marlin which we tagged and released in four minutes. When we pulled in the Coggins we found only one of the 14-0's remaining. The 1000-pound stainless steel airplane cable holding the two hooks together had broken on the strike despite only 16 pounds of strike drag. Obviously a faulty crimping technique had been employed when the hook-set had been made. That was the only previously used hook-set we had in the water, the others all having been freshly made on the first morning of the tournament. And both Richard and I had inspected it carefully before it went overboard. Choosing not to replace that hook-set proved to be quite costly as the fish we had lost was well in excess of 600 pounds and would have won $917,000! Fortunately there was enough tequila left in Cabo to drown our sorrow that night.

The fish that won the tournament was only 375 pounds. Just two qualifying fish were boated during the entire 3 days of fishing. Considering that there were 181 boats on the water three days of fishing is equivalent to a year and a half of fishing days! Two fish was not a lot to show for such an exhaustive effort. But the two boats that won all of the money didn't seem to mind. For the rest of us, well, there is always next year.