White Marlin Open Day One Excitement

The 43rd annual White Marlin open kicked off yesterday with a record 4.42 million in prize money.  There are also 329 boats registered this year, twenty more than they had last year.  Good fishing and cheap gas helped encouraged more boats to enter this year.   If you know anything about the open, these are all usually huge boats, that make a thirty foot Grady White look like a dinghy.  However last night, five minutes before the scales closed, the Get Reel out of OCMD hit the docks with a huge blue marlin, in a not so huge center console boat.  We were watching the scales live on the internet, when the boat approached.  The marlin’s anterior was hanging off the back of the boat.  They spent seven hours getting back to port with part of that fish hanging off the back of the boat.  Apparently the tail came off thirty two miles out on the way in, but they managed to keep the tail.  It took a little while for the dock crews to get the fish back on the pier.  Eventually they did  and it measured at 115 inches without the tail, and they finally weighed it in at 790 pounds, and 819 pounds with the tail.  That is  a seriously big fish for that small of a boat,  congratulations to the Get Reel and angler Jim Conway for an awesome catch.  Fortunately for the crew of the Get Reel the blue marlin still qualified, there was a lot of speculation on the White Marlin Open’s Facebook page (of course, thank you unsocial media) that it wouldn’t qualify, but eventually the leader board was updated late last night.  Nice work boys that is the catch of a lifetime.

Several boats brought in White Marlins but none qualified.

Fish On!!

Rich King

The White Marlin Open leader board as of now is …