Cobias made the difference for Pop A Top on Saturday in the Mercury/SeaVee Pompano Beach Saltwater Slam.
Capt. Skip Dana’s team brought three cobias, four kingfish and two dolphin weighing a total of 138.9 pounds to the scales at Sands Harbor Resort and Marina to win the 22nd annual tournament and more than $15,000.
Makin Time/Living Water was second with four kings, a dolphin and a blackfin tuna weighing 113.7, followed by Offshore Warrior, which had four kings and a dolphin totaling 113.2, High Gear at 91.8 and Reel Addiction at 91.4.
Dana, who won the Slam for the first time, started fishing off Juno Beach where his team’s first bite was a 27.1-pound cobia.
“Basically the first bait in the water that was going down on the downrigger, my brother-in-law, Homer [Schmidt], it was going down, boom! It got ate out of his hand,” Dana said. “We didn’t know what it was, it came right to the boat, cobia! I gaffed it and threw it in the boat, then immediately we hooked another cobia and caught that one.”
After that 16.7 cobia was landed, Pop A Top caught a few kings, a lot of bonitos, a dolphin and a 15.3 cobia.
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“All of our bites were in the first hour, 105 feet off Juno,” said Dana, who slow-trolled live goggle-eyes. “If it wasn’t for the cobias, we would’ve been in third, fourth, fifth place.”
Offshore Warrior had a 41.5-pound kingfish to tie for the value-added Bluewater Challenge for the biggest fish of the tournament with Wild Kat, which had a 41.5-pound cobia. The teams will split the $7,560 pot and another $9,901 in the Big Three for the tournament’s two biggest fish. Strictly Fishing had the third-biggest with a 38.7 king that was worth $2,475.
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