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Tarpon Fishing Tampa & Boca Grande- June 2011 PTTS-WPTTS!

Team Evinrude/Andros Takes 1st Place In week #4 of PTTS & Team Andros Places 3rd In WPTTS Week # 3!

ptts team evinrude tarpon boca

PTTS tarpon report from Boca Grande: Ok, so week 3 is filled with tons of events for Team Evinrude/Andros. First off, it's a double header as the PTTS open division is fishing from 7-10 and 11-2. These will count as PTTS events 3 and 4. Not only do we have a tarpon tournament double header, but we have the WPTTS lady anglers ready to battle on Saturday and put a tarpon boat side. I was also informed that I would have a visitor from Wisconsin. This visitor was, Dave Perry, who is part of the marketing department for Evinrude. Once I found out Evinrude was coming to town to do some filming of the tournament and boat, I thought... great no pressure, wait, now we have to perform! Well perform we did for Dave, who by the way is a great spectator and film maker.

The women's tournament, WPTTS, started off hot, within the first 2 minutes we had a tarpon hooked up. Unfortunately, this fish came unbuttoned before we were able to get a leader touch. We were unable to get another tarpon hooked up before time was called. The counter part to our team, the Lady Andros girls had a better day as they landed a tarpon large enough to capture 3rd place. The bite was slow, so it was important to hook and land every fish on every opportunity.

team evinrude
After having a slow day on Saturday for the WPTTS, I decided to change the way I was looking at the bottom. I use the Lowrance HDS10 with the Structure scan and I was not using this to it's fullest potential. The unit was new and I didn't have it set up to mark for our purpose. We took a few moments to set it up and started seeing the fish we were looking for.
tarpon tournament ptts
The open division, PTTS, began with a hot bite. The first event of the double header had fish stacked on the bottom pretty good in the beginning. We hooked up within the first half hour of the tournament and broke off on the main line. It was not a good feeling. We regrouped and hooked 2 more tarpon in this event 3. Long and short, all three fish came unhooked due to broken line/knots. We were trying a new leader system that obviously did not work out very well. We went back to our original set up for the second half of the double header. Event 4 was starting of with a few fish being hooked by tournament anglers all around. Fish were stacked up all over. It was looking to be a big bite. There were a few fish weighed in, but the later bite was producing smaller than normal fish to be weighed in. There were some fish in the low 100 lb range hitting the scales. A half hour into the tournament,Team Evinrude/Andros hooked onto a tarpon in the middle of the pack. Matt Bower hollard out "Fish On" and his Eupro Diamond series rod was bent and his Diawa reel was loosing line in a calm smooth manner. It was game on getting the fish out of the pack and driving the 26' Andros through a mess of closely knit boats. We fought the fish for over a half hour before the committee boat asked us how big it was... and all we could say is, "we don't know, we haven't seen it yet", which is normally a good sign. It was moments later that the tarpon came up to show itself and it was a good fish. We got the fish boat-side with a gaff in her lip and off to the scales we went. The tarpon weighted in at 171 lbs to take the leadearly in event 4. We then went back into the action to get some leader releases and help the time go by. One thing I learned this past weekend is, if you are sitting in first place, time goes really slow and "fish on the gaff" is the last words you want to hear. Thankfully, time expired with the 171 lb tarpon holding strong on top of the leader board. The rookie team,Team Evinrude/Andros pulled off a first place win in event 4! It could not have gone any better to showing off for the Evinrude marketing team. Hooked on Hope.org is another sponsor of ours, and one of the ladies involved in the non-profit organization fished with us Friday to show us the hot color for the weekend. Many thanks go out to Lindsay for hooking fish on one pretty jig.
1st place tarpon ptts 
Lets hope we can all have another safe and successful weekend. Brought to you by TTR your
tarpon fishing headquarters covering Tampa Bay to Boca Grande! Article by Brian Bower-Team Evinrude/Andros & TRR/Eupro Pro-Staff.
 

The weekend was the start of the Pro Tarpon tournament Series in Boca Grande. Andros Boats and Evinrude Motors sponsors Two tarpon divisions teams. Both teams are captained by Tampa Bay's Brian Bower. The WPTTS crew consist of women anglers Joyce Younce, Liz Vaulter and Lindsay Rosato with Matt Bower is acting as mate.

While the Evinrude/Andros PTTS team is crewed by anglers Steve Brownlee, Matt Bower and Lindsay Rosato.

Week 1 of the PTTS - Tarpon report by Brian Bower of Team Evinrude/Andros.

Boca Grande Pass was pretty nasty but finally cleared up enough for the tarpon to come back in. They were here good Friday as one of my Lady Anglers ( Lindsay Rosato) boated a tarpon in the 175lb range. Saturday the day of the tournament was beautiful and fish were plentiful. We only had 3 hook ups and lost all 3. I guess we weren't meant to leader any during the tournament. After the tournament, we went back out and jump a few more landing 2. Nothing huge, although we did jump one about 200lbs that was short lived.

 Sunday for the open division, the tarpon were more scattered and moving. There wasn't the same amount of fish as Saturday during the tournament. We did manage to get one leader release, but it wasn't large enough to take to the scales. The bite was much slower Sunday during the tournament. After the tournament, we went back out for some more practice and jumped a 215lb plus tarpon on the second drop. Fought the fish and got a leader touch on it for practice. We then were getting ready to have it boat side when the man in the grey suit showed up for dinner. We free lined the spool and let the tarpon go. The line broke while the tarpon and bull shark danced on top of the water for a moment. The tarpon got hit by the shark, but I think it got away. We never saw the red bath so I would say she was good.

 The discovery channel has the shark research team down in the pass conducting research for science right now. It is impressive to see the size hammer heads and bull sharks that are running with the tarpon. They are slow trolling live tarpon to hook these shark. They are using heavy steel wire on reels with large barb-less circle hooks. It's quite the outfit. The research team will take a tarpon from an angler if they want to donate it to science. They are monitoring channel 8 on the VHF they said.
The Shark Men- Shark Week Boca Grande Pass!!!

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PTTS - Professional Tarpon Tournament Series