Tournament Dynamics

South Florida breeds an intense pedigree of sailfish fanatics who chase the bite in high-speed center consoles

By Charlie Levine

August 10, 2023

The rain poured down in sheets of gray. The deluge overtook all the typical morning sounds. I couldn’t hear gulls squawking or halyards clanging. Standing under a covered fish-cleaning station beside charter-boat row at Crandon Marina on Virginia Key off Miami, I could hardly make out the boats at the other end of the harbor. Yet somewhere beyond the breakwater, in the thick of the downpour, the crew of Contender One was coming back from a bait run.

With the last sailfish tournament of the season kicking off in two days, the team needed to fill their bait pens with fresh goggle-eyes, pilchards, greenbacks and speedos. If you want to compete with the best sailfish crews in South Florida, you can’t sit at the dock. You must keep going, and this veteran team was not about to let a storm slow them down.

I sent a text to Amanda Sabin, the head of marketing for Contender Boats and the lone female on the C1 fishing team. “How you making out?” I wrote. She sent me back a photo of the sky through the windshield of the 44-foot center console. It was a color photo, but the clouds appeared black and white and menacing. “Running through storms,” she replied.

About 30 minutes later, I spotted the big center console idling into the marina. The crew looked pickled. They’d all donned rain gear from head to toe, with hoods cinched down so tightly you could only see their eyes. Despite the conditions, they appeared to be laughing and joking around with each other. They pulled up next to Cutting Edge, Capt. Quinton “Q” Dieterle’s classic 45-foot Hatteras charter boat. Dieterle has fished these waters for more than 30 years and runs C1, Contender’s flagship model rigged to the nines for tournament fishing. Powered by triple Yamaha 450s, the boat is a sleek mix of power, purpose and performance.

More than 100 baits were kicking away in the boat’s twin 55-gallon transom live wells. The crew likes to have at least 200 baits for each fishing day — 130 scaled baits (threadfin herring and sardines) and 65 to 70 gogs, but the more bait the better.

Dieterle parked the boat beside one of his floating bait pens and started to transfer the lively morsels one by one, gingerly placing them in the pen with a dip net, handling them like Fabergé eggs. And rightly so; kite-fishing for sailfish is all about bait presentation. Top tournament teams constantly catch and secure bait. A few of the baits didn’t make the cut, and Dieterle tossed them over his shoulder to the pelicans standing by. “He didn’t like the way that one looked at him,” Sabin joked.

C1 carries a day’s worth of fresh baits, but they leave the rest in the pen at the dock so they aren’t subjected to the trauma of riding around in the live well. During a tournament, the team only fishes a bait once, even if it’s still alive after coming back to the boat. And Final Sail, the last leg of Bluewater Movements three-event sailfish circuit, is a seven-line tournament. The crew runs two kites off the stern. Three baits are clipped to each kite line at staggered distances, and a seventh is fished off a flat line or sent down to depth if they mark fish. Every time Dieterle makes a move, they toss out the seven baits and set out freshies when they put the kites back out. The numbers add up quickly.

“Bait is the single, most important thing other than catching what you see,” Dieterle says. “But you’re not gonna see ’em if your bait’s no good and you’re not in the right spot.”

When the crew isn’t fishing for sails, they’re fishing for bait. If they don’t catch enough, they’ll bite the bullet and purchase some from a local bait boat. During tournaments, the price soars to $120 or more a dozen, depending on availability. There is nothing cheap about this fishery.

With the bait tucked into their pens and the rain still pouring down in buckets, Dieterle made the call to meet up the next morning to do some scouting on the last day before the tourney starts.

All-Star Team

Each member of the C1 team understands their role. They’ve fished together for years, in some cases, decades. Cap Hinkley, who is 43, grew up fishing South Florida and worked as a mate for Dieterle on Cutting Edge for 10 years, a period he refers to as “Cutting Edge U.” Lucas Nido, who is 22, and Mike Lawson, 42, also did their time at the U; these three men run the deck. The mates are in constant motion, changing leaders, adjusting kites, wiring fish and assisting the captain. The crew fishes light tackle, running 16-pound main line and 30-pound leaders. The lighter line assures a natural bait presentation, and they respool all the Shimano reels on board with fresh line before every tournament.

The anglers are Contender employees, and they use tournament fishing to build camaraderie and improve their boats. Between some friendly banter, I overheard them brainstorming about various features, such as sea chests and tackle. After a brief discussion, they decided to change out the rigger clips on the kite lines to lighter, more aerodynamic clips. The new clips, which hold the baited running line until a fish takes the bait and pulls the line out of the clip, impart less weight on the kites so they can fly more efficiently. The goal: to keep improving.

The angler lineup includes Sabin, who is 38 and started fishing with C1 in 2015, and admits to being “slightly obsessed” with catching billfish. She has landed a royal slam — catching every species of billfish — in a single calendar year, but she prefers the run-and-gun pace of fishing live baits under kites. Sabin is the only woman on board, and she fishes just as hard as her teammates. “I love it,” she says. “A lot of ladies are on the series now and out here fishing. Girls can come out here and do anything they can do.”

Jon Cooper, who is 59, has competed with Dieterle for more than 15 years. Cooper worked in sales for Contender and recently became the Dade County dealer. He has an uncanny ability to hook a sailfish with his phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. Steve Cunningham has spent the majority of his 40-plus-year career at Contender where he is vice president of operations. They call Ivan Souto, 64, an “assassin on the flat line.” Souto runs the boatbuilder’s pre-rig department. Kenny Pontaris, 54, is vice president of manufacturing. Combining boatbuilding acumen with fishing prowess has always been part of the Contender MO.

“We floated our first hull, the Contender 25, in June 1984, and that fall we started fishing the tournament circuit in Miami,” says founder and president Joe Neber. “The segue into tournaments and offshore fishing was easy because that’s what I like to do.”

For many years, Neber ran the Contender tournament boat and found great success, often fishing with his son Matthew. About five years ago, he stepped back from the tournament scene to focus on the business, which opened a second plant in Fort Pierce, Florida, in addition to its facility in Homestead.

“We won a lot of tournaments, and we learned a lot,” says Neber, who is 64. “When I got into tournament season, it was all encompassing for me. It was kind of like a small addiction that I had to kind of take a step back from. I really enjoyed myself on the team. There’s nobody better than the crew on that team. We’ve got the best sailfish anglers in the industry.”

Back to the Bite

Except for the pond-size puddles in the marina parking lot, you’d hardly know it rained several inches the day prior. We board C1 and head off to look for big pilchards in a few deep pockets of water by the mangroves. The crew deploys the sabiki rigs dozens of times, but we find no large concentrations of bait and head for the inlet, where the seas are confused and riled from yesterday’s weather. The boat hardly got the memo.

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We power through the seas and head south, where we find an incredible color break. The color of the water goes from pale blue to a deep, dark cobalt. At a depth of 120 feet, the crew sets out the kites. You can find sailfish in depths from 80 to 200 feet, and Dieterle is always on the lookout for specific signs of life.

“For the most part, you’re looking for north current, clean water and bait,” the captain says. “It’s always good when you see a lot of small baitfish, because everything can eat them. Certain fish aren’t going to be able to swallow a 1½-pound flying fish, but everything can eat a little, 6-ounce flying fish, so you look for small flyers and a good color change.”

The water can be the best indicator of fish, and after decades in the tower, Dieterle is always scanning for what he calls “highways.” “They travel with the current, and bait gets caught up in the current,” he says. “It’s like you on a treadmill. You can only go so fast before you get swept away, and that’s what happens to the bait when the ocean currents are going and the tides are pushing against them. The bait gets pushed up against an edge, like that color change. The whole food chain starts there. That’s what you’re looking for — conditions that start the food chain.”

Wind is another factor. While the fishing can be lights-out on an east or southeast wind, Dieterle’s favorite is a north wind, when the fish get up on the surface. “When you get a north wind, it causes a swell, so the fish rise up to the surface. They can use that swell to get on top and surf the waves to help propel them to the south,” he says. The fish hunt in packs, and seeing a half-dozen tailers ride the waves into the spread and pile on the baits is one of the coolest sights in fishing.

The storm seems to have spread out the fish, and we bump around to try different depths. With the Seakeeper gyro stabilizer engaged, the boat hardly rocks in the leftover swells as we drift along with the kites out. The crew is loose and joking. No one gets bent out of shape when two of the baits get tangled. “This is a preseason game, as opposed to the regular season,” Hinkley says. It’s a much different vibe during game time.

We make another move and set up just south of Fowey Light, and switch to bait preservation mode, fishing only two livies under each kite. Just before lunch, Cooper hooks the first sail of the day. The fish grabbed a short bait. I didn’t see the bite, but the anglers never leave their spots and always keep eyes on the spread.

Cooper moves to the bow and takes his time fighting the fish on 16-pound test. This is the true benefit of an open boat: The kites stay up, the baits stay in the water, and the angler with the fish is moved forward and out of the way. Another trick to winning is catching multiple fish at once, which often creates pandemonium on deck with lines running in all directions. Controlled chaos can score you a trip to the winner’s podium. “That’s how we won it the year before. We caught a five-banger with like 30 minutes to go on the last day,” Dieterle says. “We took advantage of every single opportunity.”

After releasing Cooper’s sail, the mates set the spread back out in a blink. A bit later, Souto spots a nice mark on the sounder, drops his bait and is instantly hammered. He hauls in a cobia that’s just short of the keeper mark. Action is picking up. The next bite is a king mackerel that attacks from below and airs out behind the boat, flying a good 10 feet out of the water before slicing through the leader, never to be seen again.

At 2 p.m., we score the coolest bite of the day. Two fish raise up behind the boat, a sail and a 3-foot houndfish. The sailfish snatches one bait, and the houndfish grabs another. The sailfish’s bill windshield-wipes across the surface as the frenetic dance on deck begins. Anglers bob and weave around each other to avoid tangles and stay tight as fish motor in all directions. The captain spins the boat like a top with the triple outboards. In only a few minutes, both fish are released.

The celebration is short-lived, as the call is made to haul in the lines and head for the barn. Dieterle hammers down the throttles and blasts off for Virginia Key, flying by a few other boats at 60-plus mph. Tomorrow is day one of Final Sail, and the crew needs to re-rig all of their gear. It’s a grind, but a fun one that has the promise of a handsome payday. This team has earned more than $500,000 in prize winnings according to Sabin, but it’s not just the money that motivates them.

“I’m trying to win,” Dieterle says. “It’s a mentality of, you know, slam your face into the side of the boat and just keep fishing.”