Very Very Very Serious Business

Monday marked the inaugural Tokyo Bay 3wt cup. A nonsense the Hawaiian and I came up with to make the seabassing a bit more interesting. The rules are simple: Use a 3wt and the person with the most fish over 30cm at the end of the night is the winner. Tie breakers are bonus species or biggest fish in that order.

 

We met at the dock around 5 and started gearing up. Unfortunately it was blowing a hoolie so we were anticipating having to abandon the incredibly serious battle for a plastic Aliexpress trophy I'd scrawled 3wt in sharpie on. Luckily the wind and swell was enough that captain Masuda said we couldn't go out into the bay proper and would have to stay in the canals and behind the shelter of the islands. 

 

We ended up having a pretty slow night with just 4 bass each. There just didn't seem to be any bait, except for some big mullet near one cooling outlet, in the canal. So we had to spend the night mooching around structure looking for resident fish. Towards the end of the night Dave hooked up with a nice fish that would have clinched the victory if he'd landed it. He didn't, which obviously led to speculation about the size of the hook and closing the gap with resin on his little 3wt friendly surf candy. I'd chosen a crystal shrimp in all white so wasn't concerned with issues like that. But I was concerned about the amount of extra rubbing the leader was getting from the difference in the fight compared to an 8wt. 

 

By the last half hour Dave had caught up with my 4 bass and it seemed like if either of us caught one it'd probably be the one that clinched victory.  We didn't but luckily for me there was a little, big-eyed trevally in amongst the mullet we found at the factory outlet that had taken a liking to the crystal shrimp earlier in the evening. So when we wound up to motor back to the my victory was secure.  We now only need to set up a schedule for me to defend my title as undisputed 3wt champion of the bay!