![\"2025](\"https:\/\/gulfcoastflyfishingschool.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/2025-Grand-Champions.png\")
On June 7th<\/sup>, 2025, the Gulf Coast Fly Fishing Team (\u201cGCFFS\u201d) represented by Todd Dempsey and Jake Koffler fished in the 6th<\/sup> Annual Tripletail Classic and were named Grand Champions of the tournament finishing with the lowest combined \u201ccup\u201d score to take the overall win.\u00a0 This catch, photo, tag and release tournament is held yearly at the height of tripletail season and benefits the University of South Mississippi\u2019s Gulf Coast Research Lab with the research they are conducting on Atlantic Tripletail. There are three categories that anglers are scored on: 1. Largest fish, 2. First Fish, and 3. Most inches. The tournament committee takes the finishing place of each team in each category and adds them together and the lowest scoring teams wins the tournament. The GCFFS team won the tournament with an overall cup score of 4 points finishing in First Place in Largest fish (1 pt), First place in Most inches (1 pt) and second place in First Fish (2 pts).<\/p>\nAnglers from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Texas and beyond made up the 88 anglers that competed on 34 teams. The fishing area runs from Pensacola to Gulfport providing a plethora of opportunities for teams to locate tripletail in different types of environments like tidelines, crab buoys, floating debris, and more.<\/p>\n
This years tournament started with a bang with one team, 4 time champions \u201cZululand\u201d\u00a0 catching and submitting a tripletail only 2 minutes after the tournament opened at 7a.m.! The GCFFS team submitted their first catch 2 minutes later to claim second place in the \u201cFirst Fish\u201d category with a submittal at 7:04 a.m. \u00a0Another fish caught by the GCFFS team just before 8 a.m. came in at 18 inches and held on to win first place in the \u201cLargest fish\u201d category. Usually much larger tripletail are caught that are in the mid 20 inch range but none were this year. An almost 3 hour gap ensued before the GCFFS team located the next tripletail they landed and tagged. The GCFFS were able to land 7 fish in total for a combined 95 inches to take First place in the most inches category.<\/p>\n
A strong west wind made conditions challenging for most of the afternoon however that did not seem to have an effect on the fish or their desire to bite. Multiple teams battled rough conditions and some called it a day early.<\/p>\n
A large thank you should be given to the tournament committee, especially Lance Slater and Capt. Sam Glass of Flyway Charters. They worked extremely hard to set up and run this fantastic tournament and served as emcee for the Captains Meeting the night before at Ralph and Kacoo\u2019s located on Mobile Bay on the causeway. After the tournament, the awards ceremony was held at the same place at the Captains Meeting, Ralph and Kacoo\u2019s, \u00a0downstairs with live music, a full bar, and exceptional food. Lance and Sam handled all of the duties related to handing out awards, raffle winners, and information related to the tournament. All the fisherman who competed in the tournament were appreciative of their efforts for the weekend and commented on how well run everything was. The GCFFS looks forward to participating in the 7th<\/sup> Annual Tripletail Classic in 2026.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_gallery gallery_ids=”1422,1423,1424,1425,1427,1428,1429″ posts_number=”8″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_gallery][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On June 7th, 2025, the Gulf Coast Fly Fishing Team (\u201cGCFFS\u201d) represented by Todd Dempsey and Jake Koffler fished in the 6th Annual Tripletail Classic and were named Grand Champions of the tournament finishing with the lowest combined \u201ccup\u201d score to take the overall win.\u00a0 This catch, photo, tag and release tournament is held yearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"yoast_head":"\n