Insane First Day at the White Marlin Open

By Scott Lenox

Posted on August 7th, 2017

When I use the word “insane” to describe the first day of scales action at the 44th Annual White Marlin Open I don’t mean it in the big fish, lots of fish, awesome action kind of way. I mean it in it’s literal sense. It was a run for cover, Noah’s Ark rain, hold on to your a$$ with both hands kind of insane. “I’ve never been in a tornado” might be words that I can’t say tomorrow……because I just may have been. At around 6 PM during our live broadcast coverage of the tournament a small tornado or powerful microburst landed at Harbour Island and had us all running for our vehicles. I was under the big tee shirt tent when it happened and it honestly felt like it was going to fly away. The wind lasted for several minutes and at the end of it there was some pretty significant damage at Harbour Island. The porta potties were blown over and 10 feet from where they were set up, tent stakes for a 50′ x 50′ tent were pulled from the ground and from what I hear the small shed on the fuel dock at Harbour Island was blown off of the dock and destroyed. Thankfully there were no major injuries and we were able to get the live feed up about 2 hours later. Even then we had to deal with monsoon type rains and even some thunder and lightning. Dave Messick and Gregory Benn stuck it out in the deluge and got me some great video for the stream and Dave took this killer pic of a boat leaving the inlet this morning….which they probably regretted later.

Even though we had to deal with some pretty major weather there were still some fish that came to the dock caught by the 136 boats that fished today. There were two white marlin brought in, neither of which made the minimum weight, and there were some tuna and one wahoo weighed. Here are your current leaders.

In the wahoo category, Gary Capuano holds first place with a 55 pound wahoo he caught on the Hog Wild that is currently worth $15,000.

Third place tuna was caught by Jason Walker on the Tale Chaser and weighed 55.5 pounds and is currently worth $30,000.

Second place tuna weighed 57 pounds and was caught on board the Slab Jack by Tommy Parlacoski and is currently worth $76,000.

First place in the tuna category was a nice 64 pound yellowfin caught by Jim Stavola on the Milling Around. Jim’s tuna is currently worth $460,000!!

The Spring Mix II had to deal with some nasty conditions today, but they were able to release three white marlin on their trip.

Yesterday during their practice run Megan higgins and Katie Larrimore went out on the Git r Done and went 3/4 on white marlin! It was Megan and Katie’s first white marlin catch! Captain Dave Schulte and mate Travis Brown put the ladies on the white’s and all were released.

Yesterday my buddy Randy Swain Jr. was fishing with his dad Randy Swain Sr., 6 year old Louden Swain, Russ Coward, Rick Kramer and Rusty Garufi when they put the kaibosh on some flounder. The crew jigged bucktails on ocean structure to catch a pile of flounder with several fish up to 25″.