PORT O’CONNOR, Texas – Jeff Kriet is no stranger to long, arduous runs to get to biting fish in a tournament.
“You’ve got to do what you have to do to compete,’’ Kriet said.
This last weekend, though, may have taken the cake when it comes to boating to winning fish. Over the weekend, Kriet, a top competitor on the Bassmaster Elite Series, won the “Tuna Division” of the Poco Bueno Fishing Tournament out of Port O’Connor.
Kriet and three friends, fishing as the crew of “Long Shot,” (a term that was as literal as it was figurative) boated a 116.5-pound yellow fin tuna to win the division. But it wasn’t the size of the fish that was as impressive as what it took to catch it.
The crew, made up of Kriet, the Captain, along with Jeff Welch Partner, Joey Cantrell and Jeff Massey, took off from the dock at 7:30 p.m., ran for 11 1/2 hours across the Gulf of Mexico before ever making a cast at 7 a.m. the next morning. They then trolled for two days before running back. Kriet was piloting his 33-foot long Contender with twin 300 horsepower Yamahas in a trip that was 330 miles in rough water, by bass boat standards. That boat was the second smallest boat in the fleet of 78 boats in the event. The average rig in the event was over 60 feet long and cost well into the millions to own.
Imagine a 12-foot flatbottom getting ready to take off from an Elite event and you get the idea.
Once to the chosen area, they never left. The only time they came close to not being there was in the middle of the night when they bedded down for a few hours. Even though Kriet dropped drift socks while they napped, the wind and waves carried them more than 22 miles from their fishing area. During the fishing time, they spent a total of 21 hours trolling.
“It’s not bass fishing, but it’s fishing,” Kriet said. “It’s hardcore. It’s brutal, it’s dangerous as hell, but man is it exciting. We spent months getting the boat ready, rigging baits and studying charts.”
The payoff was two-fold. Kriet and his crew caught the tuna, one of only three catches, during the 48-hour span at 5:25 p.m. on the first day. It was a capper to an already exciting day. They started the morning off with a 300-pound blue marlin, the equivalent of the Holy Grail for many off shore anglers. They followed that up with a white marlin on Day 2.
“I’ve pulled (trolled) for three days and never had a bite,” Kriet said. “You could pull for a month and never catch a blue marlin.”
The marlin is what the team was after. The tuna was just a bonus, and it had a bittersweet taste to it. Unlike bass tournaments where every competitor pays the same entry, in offshore events you pony up differing amounts of money for each fish you plan on fishing, anywhere from $5,000 to $500 per species. Payouts are based on what everyone else puts in and equal to the percentage you put in. At $5,000 you are 100 percent in. At $500 you are 10 percent in.
In the Long Shot’s case, they ponied up $5,000 for Blue Marlin, plus $3,000 for Wahoo and Dolphin. Not expecting to catch a tuna, they only played for $500. In the equivalent of a big bass tournament, teams are only fishing for the largest of any one species. Many of the teams go the weekend without ever getting a bite.
“The guys who finished second cleaned house,” Kriet said. “They took home well over $100,000. The winners of the Blue Marlin probably won around $500,000. We would have taken home over $100,000 if we would have played for more.”
As it is, Kriet and his crew took home somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000.
“The moral of the story is next time you play the game and you have that much invested, you better cover your ass,” Kriet said. “I just picked wrong.”
Without the cover, Kriet was as excited as if he had won an Elite event.
“This is a big deal in the offshore world,’’ he said. “It’s the equivalent of winning an Elite event in that world.”