Article by Dale Timmons
Well, the 37th Annual White Marlin Open is now history. It was an exciting tournament, at least for the first two days, and we saw some very impressive fish come to the scales. Who would have bet that we would see another “grander” blue marlin after last year’s first ever in Ocean City history? In the white marlin category, I know a lot of experienced fishermen (including me) who would have lost money betting that Tommy Fowler’s 92-pound white would take the top prize. As it turned out, he only held the lead for a couple of hours, when Brian Roberts showed up at the scale with his 97.5-pound white on the “Shelly II”. Roberts has come a long way, from “zero to hero”, since he said the first time he fished in the Open the boat sank, and he spent an hour treading water. After that experience, some folks might have given up fishing, but Roberts’ determination has now paid off. Incidentally, one of the terms I neglected to include in my short glossary of fishing jargon last week was “pitch bait.” This is a bait that you rig and have ready in the cockpit but don’t put out as a trolled bait. If a marlin comes up on the dredge or other teaser, you “pitch” the bait to the fish and hope for the best. This is often done by the mate, who hooks the fish and hands off the rod. To Roberts’ credit, he saw the fish come up and pitched the ballyhoo bait and hooked the big white, all on his own.
Roberts and Fowler are both “locals” from Berlin, and third place white marlin angler Tommy Jones is a “local” from Linthicum, MD, but many of the winners were a long way from home. James Kontos, who caught the grander blue, hails from Crested Butte, CO, while Trey Little, who had the second place 790 pound blue marlin, along with the winning tuna (quite a feat to win in two categories) comes from Rockport, TX. Other winners were from New Hampshire and St. Augustine, FL. There was even one group of guys on a relatively small boat who brought the boat all the way from Michigan…
The New Hampshire angler was a young lady named Caitlin Shiffer, from Windham, NH. She fought the third place 73.5 lb. yellowfin tuna on a “dink rod” with 30 lb. test for 3.5 hours. Mate Matt Magassy of the “Lucky Duck II” said a billfish had originally come up on the bait, but faded off, and the yellowfin immediately grabbed the small ballyhoo. Like I have said before, it’s a “dog eat dog” world out there…
Anglers in this year’s Open caught an impressive 590 white marlin this year. They released 552, or 93.5 per cent of the whites, and even though we weighed more than we usually do this year, most of the fish were respectable and you couldn’t blame the crews for trying. All of the winning whites this year were actual white marlin, meaning none were roundscale spearfish, also known as “hatchet marlin”, which are counted as whites. According to my records, we did weigh nine spearfish, however, out of the 38 “white marlin” weighed. Only two blue marlin were weighed, out of 24 reported. I was surprised that no one caught a qualifying blue for third place money, but that is one reason tournament organizers set a 500 lb. minimum—to keep many from being killed. Seven sailfish and nine longbill spearfish were also released.
It was also strange that no bigeye or bluefin tuna were weighed in, just two wahoos and no sharks. The bigeyes must have pushed on north of us this summer, and stricter catch limits on bluefins might have kept captains from pursuing them (plus a relative lack of bluefins this year). Not too many of the boats actually target sharks anymore, but a few makos are usually caught “accidentally” on trolled baits. Not this year.
On Monday, the first day of the tournament, we weighed almost 60 fish, which may have been a record. Most of the boats came in all at once, and we did get backed up. My apologies to those of you who had to wait quite a while to get your fish weighed. Other than that, the tournament seemed to go smoothly, with no major disasters and relatively good weather. My job as weighmaster is mainly to see that the rules are followed and to read the numbers. The real work is done by the scales crew, and I want to thank Alex Davis, Mike Hannon, Pat Hannon, Pat Hannon, Jr., and Dustin Thomas for making it look easy. Once again, I also want to thank my friend David Cropper for splicing the tail ropes that we used to hoist all those big fish. A note of thanks also goes to Rolfe Gudelsky at the Ocean City Fishing Center for loaning me their Torry meter. As for the rules, I really believe that most crews follow them and police themselves, despite the reputation that we fishermen have as “liars” (which really ticks me off). We did have one dolphin missing the bottom half of its tail, which something had bitten off right at the boat, technically making it a “mutilated fish” that can’t be scored according to IGFA rules, and we had another dolphin with an offset circle hook hanging in its mouth (the rules say non-offset only), but since neither fish was even close to being a contender, I didn’t have to ruin anyone’s day.
The Open didn’t seem to produce any strange or unusual catches this year, but I did see one critter that I had never encountered before. One of the white marlin spit up a small squid that was new to me, even though I used to help pack hundreds of pounds of squid at the old Paul’s Tackle Shop when I was a kid. Anyway, instead of having a long, cylindrical body that is kind of pointed at one end with prominent “wings”, this squid was short and squatty, with an almost bulbous shaped body. I went to the books, and I believe it was what is called a “Brief Thumbstall” squid. Kind of interesting, and definitely a new one on me…
File this under, “maybe some good news.” I talked briefly with Steve Doctor of the Maryland DNR at the Open, and he told me that federal fisheries officials have raised the coast wide flounder quota for next year by about 30 per cent. It’s unknown at this point exactly how this will translate into size and creel limits locally. A lot depends on how many fish they say
we catch this summer. Unfortunately, those numbers are still coming from the discredited MRFSS survey, so who knows? Steve did say he didn’t think we would go below an 18-inch minimum, but as most flounder fishermen know, going from this year’s 19 inches down to 18 would be a big improvement, to say the least…
Contact Dale Timmons at [email protected] or call
410-629-1191.
