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Holiday Alert!
We have just ended the
busiest and most exciting week on the Cabo fishing calendar – tournament
week. First up was the Los Cabos Billfish Tournament, an event
sponsored by the Los Cabos Hotel Association and operated by Marlin
Magazine. The amount of entries was very respectable at 64 teams. The
largest fish was caught on the first day of the event and was a 379 lb
blue caught aboard “Big Brother” by local angler Arturo Rivera. The fish
took an orange and black lure just outside of Punta Gorda at 11.39 am
and took an hour to boat. This savvy team raced in to weigh their fish,
as they knew that if they waited until the end of the day valuble pounds
which translate into points would be lost. Team Big Brother suffered
through two nail-biting days, to see if they would be lodged from the
first place spot, but it was not to be, they were able to maintain their
lead. They did take first place but not the lion’s share of the dollars,
as they were not entered in all the jackpots. This is how it shaped up
at the end of the three day event:
1st Place: Big
Brother – total winnings $121,425.00 379 lb blue.
2nd Place :
Karma – total winnings $381,883.34 375 lb blue.
3rd Place :
On-Site - total winnings $13,712.50 366 lb blue
As you can see it was a
very close competition, with not much weight difference between the
first three places.
The Bisbee
Black and Blue, this year was the 25th in the history of
the tournament and as always much anticipated. The event started on
the 22nd and was spread over three days, with the awards
banquet held on Saturday night at the Puerto Paraiso Mall. A total
of 171 boats entered with teams from USA, Mexico, Costa Rica, El
Salvador, U.K, France, Germany, Italy, Nicaragua, Spain and Sweden –
so yeah, there were a lot of funny accents at the awards banquet.
The first day of the tournament saw a huge fish come to the dock,
weighing a hefty 645 lbs – a black marlin, which took a 10 lb
yellowfin tuna bait at the Gordo Banks and happened to have a bill
of another fish stuck in it’s jaw. Interestingly the angler was a
lady (and she is, in all senses of the word), Martha McNabb who
lives at Los Barriles on the East Cape, fished aboard her own vessel
“Retriever” a 61 ft Viking and did a great job in boating the fish
in just 35 minutes (way to go Martha – show they guys how it’s
done!). This caused mixed emotions, the first that there were big
fish out there, the second, this was going to be a hard fish to
beat. Several other qualifying fish were caught but none even came
close to Martha’s fish. Second day out the largest fish to come to
the scale was a 448 lb blue aboard “Reel Pain II” – caught by Russ
McGregor from San Diego. This team was happy though, as like Martha,
on the first day they were also entered in all the jackpot divisions
and knew that at a minimum they had made $458,000.00 for the largest
fish on day two. Going into to day three and team Retriever were
still in first place and it looked like for the first time in the
history of this event a lady angler would win. Fish came to the
scale, but again nothing close to Martha’s monster. Almost
unnoticied team Reel Pain II backed up with another fish this time
418 lbs. Both of their fish were taken on a blue Marlin Magic lure.
Most people don’t know that the point system in this tournament, is
not largest fish takes all, but rather an accumaltive system. So
with the weight of these two fish added together, the total for
this team was 866 lbs, bumping Martha out of first place. This was
the first time team “Reel Pain II” had fished the Bisbee. The
vessel, an 82 ft Hatteras was skippered by a native of Hawaii, Ryan
Haslam, who lives in San Diego and had previously ran long range
boats, such as the Red Rooster and Royal Solaris.
At the end of the
event 63 blue marlin and been caught, with those under the 300 lb
minimum released, 56 striped marlin were released as well as 9
sailfish.
These are the final
standings:
1st Place:
Reel Pain II – total winnings $1,126,510.00 Two blues 448 & 418
lbs.
2nd Place:
Retriever – total winnings $724,330.00 black 645 lbs.
3rd Place:
Teamwork – total winnings $25,500.00 blues 374 lbs
4th Place:
Sleek Cat II – total winnings $15,300.00 blue 372 lbs.
5th Place:
Country King – total winnings $10,200.00 blue 354 lbs.
Release Category:
1st Place:
Daddy Rabbit – total winnings $77,513.00 2 blues, 2 stripes.
2nd Place:
El Lobo – total winnings $26,831.00
3rd Palce:
Predator II – total winnings $14,906.00
As usual there were a
lot of interesting stories of huge fish that got away; the 3rd
place team told us that they were polygraphed twice and it was
harder than catching the fish! This is the first time that two
smaller fish win this event, rather than one large fish. All in all
it the consenus was a good event this year.
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