Seminole Earns SKA Fishing Top Honor

By Kenny Bayon

Talk about making a major splash on the scene, Tribal citizen Chris Osceola was named Southern Kingfish Association, or SKA’s rookie fisherman of the year. In Osceola’s first year on the tour, he finished fifteenth in his division, which has up to 150 teams in each division that includes professional fisherman.

Osceola and his Team Hard Rock fishing team—Ernie Tiger, Sunny Frank and Todd Nickel— placed in four out of the five division tournaments. This included a victory at the Canaveral Mac Attack in November, where Osceola scaled the winning fish with a 48.41 pound kingfish on the first day of competition.

“We were fishing one mile north of Sebastian Inlet,” explained Osceola. “We had a kite out, but lost it. As we were retrieving it, she hit our goggle eye. This was early–9 a.m. Then our bait well pump’s sea cock fitting fell off and we had to deal with taking on water. We didn’t even get to fish on Sunday.”

That winning fish propelled the teams from twentieth place to tenth in division 10.

The SKA, founded in 1991, has grown into the premier saltwater organization in the country, and produces the world’s finest offshore tournament trail–the mercury tournament trail. This trail consists of eleven geographic divisions with three to five events per division to earn points to qualify to the national championship, the most prestigious event in saltwater fishing. Chances are you’ve heard about them through national publications and they have been generating much press. The SKA consists of a board of directors made up of fishermen.

Why do they go after the king mackerel? Kings are abundant, easy to catch and their migration pattern covers the entire Atlantic coastline which spans from Virginia to the Florida Keys, up the west coast of Florida and through the Gulf states to Texas. It has become the “bass of the ocean” and the marine and tackle industry can easily identify with a single species like our freshwater counterpart, the largemouth bass.

Osceola began fishing when he was four-years-old with his father out in the Everglades. He has been fishing competitively since 1999 and gives credit to the person who guided him to where he is today in the fishing community, Tribal citizen Leon Wilcox. He credits Wilcox for helping him get started and help steer him in the right direction.

Osceola finished fifteenth and Wilcox finished seventeenth in the same division, which qualified both of them the national championships in Biloxi, Miss.

“I have always enjoyed the water and fishing,” Osceola said. “Add the competition of a tournament, and I was a natural.”

He also said he enjoys meeting some of the top teams in the U.S. and top sponsors. Osceola states that he couldn’t have done this without the help of the Tribal Council, Hollywood Recreation department for sponsorship and the support and his teammates.

“This is a team sport and it takes a team effort to accomplish this feat,” he said. “This isn’t as easy as people think. You just don’t throw a worm in the water and drag it along.”