In March of 2011 four fishing buddies, Ian Heward, Bryn Dye, Paul Coventry and Chris Silvester, made a decision to fish the Slam’n Salmon Ocean Derby in Brookings.

The ringleader of the group, Heward, had been to Brookings a number of times with his sister and her husband, Tim and Sally Newby, and knew of the derby and how wonderful a weekend of fishing with the guys would be.

The group planned and saved and, in the case of Coventry, bribed their wives to be able to attend.

 It sounds like the typical story of any group of fishermen, except for one small fact: This group of fishermen was from London, England.

“We came for the holiday, the beer and the fishing,” Heward said of their decision. “We flew into Los Angeles on Tuesday, and stopped at Fort Bragg (Calif.) to try some beer at a brewery.”

The group plans to fish for shark out of San Fransisco after the derby is over and then stop in Santa Cruz for one last outing before heading home.

“We’ve all seen Jaws,” Coventry said. “We know what to expect.”

The foursome are all members of T.O.F.F.S., a fishing club that Silvester founded about three years ago. T.O.F.F.S. stands for The Old Fountain Fisherman’s Society.

Members of the club get together regularly for fishing, beer drinking and camaraderie, but this past year they’ve had six out of six fishing trips canceled due to high winds and foul weather. 

“It’s mainly about the beer, not the fishing,” Silvester said with a chuckle. “If we get canceled for bad weather, we just go drink some beer.”

 The group is staying at the home of the Newbys and has chartered with Ultimate Catch Charters to get them on the water on Saturday and Tidewind Sport Fishing for Sunday.

For most of the group, this trip marked the first time they had been to Brookings, and for Dye it was the first time he had been to the United States.

“The people are more friendly here,” Dye said. 

Coventry agreed, “Nice food, nice weather.”

The group took a creative approach to making the trip happen financially: they headed to the track.

Every Saturday for 20 weeks they each took 10 pounds ($16) to the track and placed bets. The only rule was that they couldn’t bet the same race as one of their mates.

Their strategy worked as they were able to make $3,100 to help finance the trip.

“I don’t think we ever came home with a loss in funds,” Silvester said. “We won something every weekend we went and even hit some pretty longshots.”

“It was a little way of subsidizing our holiday,” Heward added.

Coventry had a larger problem that just money standing in the way of his coming, though – his wife.

“I’d just been to Thailand, and my wife didn’t want me to go with me mates,” Coventry explained. “She said I’d taken enough holidays with the boys.”

Shortly after cutting her husband’s fishing dreams short Mrs. Coventry found a new job and needed a completely new wardrobe.

“She came to me and told me that if I’d buy her some new clothes I could go,” he said. “I rushed out and bought her as many clothes as she wanted and then went and bought my plane ticket so she couldn’t back out.”

The foursome hopes to catch a salmon, but, to a man, they’ll all be happy with just drinking some beer and spending time together.