For Tournament Fishermen
Most are already using multiple traditional fishing kites and rubber balloons. They have excellent crew who are well versed in flying these kites.
How Could Professional Fishing Helikites Help?
1. Saving critical tournament fishing time by eliminating kite changes. More Time = More Fish. At present if the wind changes, the fishing kites need to be changed to suit the new conditions. This requires all the lines to be taken in, a new kite attached and then all the lines re-deployed = fishing time lost. Fishing Helikites fly in winds from 0 – 25 mph with no changes at all, so they never need to be taken down as conditions change and so give more fishing time.
2. Saving critical tournament fishing time by eliminating kites crashing into the water. When this happens, the drowned kite needs to be dragged in as quickly as possible, however winch too fast and the kite spars break. So, it is a slow process. Also, it is quite possible that the multiple fishing lines may also get tangled, thus losing even more time. Fishing Helikites never fall down or crash into the water. Even if one is stuffed forcefully by hand into the water it will automatically fly out, high into the air. A Fishing Helikite never drowns.
3. Reducing the cost per hour of tournament time. When the high cost of the initial purchase and ongoing running of large tournament fishing boats is considered, plus the extra costs of fuel, huge tournament entry fees, fishing gear, live bait, crew, accommodation and travel, then the cost per hour of tournament fishing is massive. If Fishing Helikites reduce the ‘down-time’ caused by changing kites, fiddling with rubber balloons and retrieving drowned traditional fishing kites, then the Fishing Helikite will significantly reduce the cost per hour of fishing time.
4. Level the tournament playing field. As Helikites can be flown from any size of boat, with fewer crew, they may enable small teams in small inexpensive open boats, to be fully competitive against large tournament boats costing tens of millions of dollars.
5. Win more tournaments. The time lost from changing traditional kites and retrieving them from the sea after crashing will be very variable. However, if it only loses a few percent of fishing time, this could be the difference between winning or losing a very valuable tournament. If the above is true, and all else is equal, then it follows that more time available should lead to more tournament wins. Which is what it is all about.
6. Win more prize money. For the 66th Annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in 2024, some 302 boats competed for a total of $7,562,700 prize money. The winner, ‘Game Time’ collected $1,816,375 of this prize. The possibility of losing out on similar prizes by a few percentage points, due to time wasted dealing with the vagaries of traditional fishing kites, does not bear thinking about.