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Blue Marlin Grand Championships tournament report

9K views 31 replies 29 participants last post by  BlueHeron35 
#1 ·
Fished the Blue Marlin Grand Championship at the Wharf in OB this past weekend with my family. This time I even had my 79 yr old father on board!

Let me start by saying what a fantastic job everyone associated with the event did, from Art Farve, Rocky, Chris Miller, Beverly, Jim Cox as well at the guys working the dock. This was absolutely the best run and nicest tournament that I have ever been fortunate enough to fish!

Long story short virtually everyone to my knowledge went SW, way SW! We fished WhoDat, Amos Runner and Medusa on Friday and Thunderhorse, Thunderhawk, Blind Faith etc… on Saturday. We fished hard, very hard, so hard that we needed to make the run Friday night up to Venice to refuel. We are very thankful for Cypress Cove making arrangements for us to fuel up at 2 AM! Running up and back down the MS river from midnight to 3 AM is an interesting experience!!

We lost a monster YF (150+) at the gaff after an hour long fight on an 80W. That was heartbreaking! Later in the day my sister caught a nice sailfish. We came across an abandoned pontoon boat that gave up a few nice mahi with the largest being 42 lbs, which was good enough for first place dolphin in the tournament. We also caught a few smallish tuna and other dolphin.

Sunday was a wet day as it rained all day, fishing was slow.

The weigh in was awesome! The tournament did an outstanding job bringing everyone and the fish to the “stage”, really really fun!

We won a little money, could have won many tens of thousands of more, but we are not big Calcutta betters, more glory hunters. Made lots of new friends and had an absolute blast!



The dock was a constant party!!




pontoon boat that gave up the mahi


mid fight on the YF we lost


Hard core fishing sister!


sister's sailfish





Robert
 
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#12 ·
Thanks for posting and congrats on the dolphin
 
#18 ·
Justin, Your lures have been on fire for us this year!! Every billfish has been on either a Lena or Moxie all year! I will email you pics shortly.

Robert
 
#15 ·
Great job Robert! Glad to see that you won the Mahi money! Enjoyed seeing you guys come in on Saturday night and talking with you during the weigh-in. Sorry to hear about the monster YFT that was lost at the gaff. Enjoyed the prictures of the abandoned pontoon boat! Great post as always!

Bruce
FATSTACKS
 
#19 ·
Man, I always thought I was more on the hardcore side of being a fisherman. But, your schedule has got me comnvinced that I'm more like softcore!

Nice trip and congrats to you for putting some funds back in to the fishing account.

Those floating ghost boats are scary! First that cat and now a pontoon!? Those are the things running at night - which give me the chills!
 
#20 ·
Those floating ghost boats are scary! First that cat and now a pontoon!? Those are the things running at night - which give me the chills!
One thing nice about the pontoon boat was that being metal it showed up huge on the radar, we saw it miles before we knew what it was, now the swamped cat is a whole nother can of worms!!

A few more pics

Cow we caught before the bull



Nephew fighting the bull on the Stella!


bull in the water




another view of the bull



nephew rummaging thru pontoon boat



additional bait the pontoon boat gave up!


sunset on Jacquelyn



Robert
 
#23 ·
Great report and made everybody wish they were with you. FYI - Stone Fuel, just upstream from Cypress Cove has fuel 24/7 and so does the fuel dock first thing in the jump from the river, can't remember their name. Either place is considerably cheaper than Cypress Cove, the only issue is they are commercial type facilities geared for serving the oil industry boats. You need to have some good fenders/polyballs.
 
#28 ·
Nice report and congrats on getting some cash. I didn't fish the tournament but was at innovator, mars, and ursa Thurs night. Made it to medusa about 9 fri morning with about 15 other boats. Didn't even attemp to make any passes around it. We had a small white come up on the shotgun at uncle john, but he disappeared quick. The other fuel dock just as you turn into the jump is L&L Martin. They are 24/7 also and about a $1.00 cheaper than cypress and Venice marina. But like posted earlier, have good fenders.
 
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