John McLay, his son Gavin and I fished the 3rd Annual Monster Kingfish Tournament out of John's Pass in St.Petersburg today.  Usually, we fish John's 23ft Sea Craft, Outta Line.  Instead, we decided to fish my North End bay boat, Flat Liner.  We started the morning off early in search of live baits.  After successfully netting the baits we were looking for, we headed over to more baits penned up at a friend's house.  From there, we headed out to our fishing destination close to shore. 

 

Fishing started at 6:00am.  Around 9:00am, we had a reel singing.  The flat line way behind the boat was hit.  John grabbed the rod, Gavin and I cleared the other lines.  About 20-25 minutes later, John finessed the fish to the top where I gaffed it and pulled it into the boat.  This fish was fat.  Just what we were looking for.  We iced it down and went back to fishing to get Gavin a Junior fish.  We only had one other bite that was lost due to the fish biting through #5 wire. Unfortunatley, we did not have another bite for Gavin.

 

In this tournament, we were allowed to take the fish in by boat or car. So, after the early afternoon bite, we took the boat off the water, cleaned it and drove the fish down to the pass.  With 35 minutes left in the tournament, we were sitting in 1st place.  About handfull of other boats weighed in after us but could not take us from the top spot.  In the end, team Flat Liner/Outta Line won the event with a 39.72 pound kingfish.  First place paid $5,000.