The twenty-sixth annual Pensacola International Billfish Tournament was held July 4th - July 7th in Pensacola, Florida with one hundred forty-six teams and 596 anglers competing in the two day event. I was fishing aboard the 52 foot Australian built Southern Cross “Outrageous” captained by Destin”s Andy Lindsey with owner Frank Hayman and my friend Ray Tew out of Jacksonville. I caught a small white marlin early on the first day of the tournament. Even though the fish was large enough to boat we elected to tag it fearing that the obligatory overnight shrinkage might make it a disqualifying size by the time of the weigh-in the next evening. Our decision ended out costing us the overall billfish championship of the tournament though as later that same afternoon I landed an Atlantic blue marlin that weighed 255 pounds at the scales. Only fish that were weighed counted toward the championship. Another team that weighed both a blue and a white marlin won that honor. We had actually caught our two fish first and therefore would have won had we chosen to take the white. We couldn’t complain though as we still earned $24,170 in prize money taking seventh place in the blue marlin division and first place in the wahoo division with a 62 pound bruiser that Ray boated on day two.

Fishing during the tournament was challenging due to a storm in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico. We experienced eight to ten foot seas the entire 48 hours we were on the water making sleeping difficult at night. One had to constantly hold on to keep from being thrown out of the bunk. The water was so rough that I even had to give one of my partners a shot for sea-sickness so that he could continue to fish.

There were sixteen blue marlin, seven white marlin, and ten sailfish tagged and released during the Pensacola tournament. And seven blues, three whites, and one sail were weighed at the scales. In addition to the billfish twelve wahoo, thirteen dolphinfish (mahi mahi, dorado), and eight large yellowfin tuna were scaled. The vast majority of the fish taken were donated to help feed the needy in the Emerald Coast area.

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