Fished the Pescadora Lady Angler tournament Friday and Saturday out of our home Marina Pez Vela in Costa Rica. 57 teams competing, max 5 girls per boat. They allow hook and hand where a guy can hook the fish and then hand it to a female to reel in or you can go IGFA rules where the girls hook their own fish and earn bonus points. We chose IGFA even though our girls aren’t nearly as experienced as the other teams here.
Day 1 was amazing. We bounced up and down between 1st and 7th place all day, finally holding 2nd place for almost the last 3 hours of the tournament. However with 2 minutes remaining a boat caught a doubleheader sailfish to pass us by one fish and knocking us out of the Day 1 money (only 2 boats get paid). Our girls released 20 sailfish out of 38 bites and 2 blue marlin from 2 bites. an amazing job by our team to finish the day that high on the leaderboard.
Day 2 didn’t go nearly as well. We went 11/21 on sailfish and 0/2 on blue marlin and just never found the right spot to fish. We still ended up finishing 17th out of 57 teams, and 7th place of all IGFA teams.
The girls were so excited about the result they have decided to become a permanent team, practice fishing here whenever possible and also fishing in Guatemala and entering all the female tournaments they can.