Marlin June/July 2018

We are in the midst of a modern-day arms race in sport fishing. It’s a showdown to see who can outrun, out-fish and out-tech the next guy. Take the dredge, for example. It started off as a six-armed contraption with some big silver mullet on each arm. Then came a double-stacked dredge. Mudflaps. Squids. Skirts. Back to natural baits again. Triple tiers with dozens of baits. Pretty soon, the bait budget for the dredges rivals what we used to spend on fuel. And these are just the teasers—you don’t actually catch a damn thing with them. The boats are getting faster too. It wasn’t that long ago when a 26-knot cruise was considered pretty quick, but those days are receding faster than my hairline. Go to a boat show today…

editor@marlinmag.com FOR THE LADIES I was really pleased to see Heather Maxwell’s article on ladies’ tournaments. Thanks for mentioning the Ocean City Marlin Club ladies’ tournament, Heels and Reels. We are really proud of our event, and we have some of the best lady anglers in the world enter each year. However, we do not make them fish three straight days in any conditions. Our tournament fishes one out of two days. We also host one of the largest ladies’ tournaments in the world. The Capt. Steve Harman’s Poor Girls Open, based out of Bahia Marina in Ocean City, averages more than 100 boat entries each year. The tournament takes place the week after the White Marlin Open and usually has some fantastic fishing. Also, the tournament has donated hundreds…

BIRDS AHEAD While fishing off Costa Rica, freelance photographer Jessica Haydahl Richardson witnessed one of the most memorable sights of her career. “Late in the day, the bait came to the surface, chased by packs of striped marlin,” she says. “Thousands of birds also joined the party. It turned into a feeding frenzy, with marlin cutting through the bait and the birds attacking from above. It was incredible.” LOCATION Haydahl took the photo during the first leg of the 2017 Los Sueños Signature Triple Crown in Costa Rica. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Nikon D3 LENS: Sigma 150-600mm Sport ISO: 400 APERTURE: f/8 SPEED: 1/2000 sec…

As much as you love tournaments today, is it true you were not too excited about starting the Bay Point Invitational? Yep. In 1983, I was running Bay Point Marina. A retired banker named Wayne Davis thought we should have a tournament at the marina. My thought on the whole tournament thing was that it sounded like a hell of a lot of work, and I was right about that one. So how did the Bay Point Invitational come to be? Davis kept pushing, and then Bill Spann stepped up with the financial support to underwrite the first tournament. Spann deserves so much credit because without him there would have never been a Bay Point Invitational, and probably not a Blue Marlin Grand Championship either. Once we had the backing…

WHERE JUNE/JULY The tournament spotlight shines brightly on the Gulf of Mexico this summer as a series of high-profile events takes center stage from the Florida Panhandle to Texas. Elsewhere, the beautifully scenic island nation of Bermuda hosts the Bermuda Triple Crown in July, attracting some of the world’s top teams, and the seamounts off Costa Rica remain a consistent blue marlin hot spot as well. BITE TRACKER Stay current with the best bites from the top billfish destinations around the globe at marlinmag.com/travel.…

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