BLUEWATER CURRENTS
Team Galati earns a hard-fought victory
The second leg of the seventh-annual Signature Triple Crown series, presented jointly by Los Sueños Resort and Marina and Chantilly Air, was held February 26-29, 2020, and wrapped up just as the COVID-19 pandemic threat was emerging on the world stage. Forty-one teams and 202 anglers released a three-day total of 870 billfish in the event, including 703 sails and 67 marlin.
The team on Shoe kicked off the second leg with a sailfish release just eight minutes after lines in was called at 8:00 a.m. By noon, the fleet had released 164 sails and eight marlin; HT Hook was leading with 1,200 points, followed by the team on Tarheel with 1,200 points, and Team Galati with 1,100 points. War Party picked away at the sailfish, finishing Day One with 16 sails and securing their secondplace daily finish with a marlin release late in the day. As the dust settled after the first day’s action, the official score put
Off Duty in first place with 2,200 points (12 sailfish/two marlin), followed by War Party in second place with 2,100 points (16 sails/one marlin), and Team Galati in third with 2,000 points (15 sailfish/one marlin). As always, the critical marlin releases—each worth 500 points—made a big difference in the team’s scores.
Between 10 a.m. and noon on Day Two, War Party went on to release three more sails, taking over first place with 2,500 points as of the midday update. Reel Joy slid into the top spot with a pair of marlin releases at 12:30 p.m., until Team Galati got their second marlin release less than an hour later, taking them to the front of the pack. By lines out at 4 p.m., Team Galati was in the lead with 3,500 points, followed by Reel Joy with 3,000, and Tarheel in third, also with 3,000 points. Day Three would be a battle royale all the way to the finish.
The Outage team started off the day with a marlin hookup at 8:04 a.m., releasing their fish five minutes later. In under an hour, seven more marlin had been released by the fleet, and by 10 a.m., the leaderboard looked almost completely different, with Off Duty now in first place with 4,100 points, Team Galati in second at 4,000 points, and Outage in third with 3,300 points. The leaders traded shots as the clock kept ticking down.
At 2:21, Team Galati, Off Duty and
Outage were all tied up. No sooner had this report been shared by tournament control to the fleet when Outage released a double and moved ahead. Team Galati then retook first place with a marlin release just before 3 p.m. and stayed there until the end, where they finished with a three-day combined total of 5,000 points for 25 sails and five marlin, and winning the second leg of the tournament series, just as they had in 2014, 2015 and 2019.
Outage finished second with 4,800 points (23 sailfish/five marlin), and
Tarheel was third on time, also with 4,800 points from 33 sails and three marlin. Fish Tank’s Mike Ivancevic was the Top Angler for Leg Two, releasing eight sailfish and two marlin to score 1,800 points.
Due to the pandemic, the tournament organizers have decided to overlay the third and final leg of the 2020 Signature Triple Crown series on 2021’s third-leg event. In essence, Leg Three in 2021 will determine 2020’s Leg Three first-, second- and third-place winners as well as Top Angler—in addition to the 2020 overall series championship, overall Top Angler and overall Top Female Angler.
BLACKHAWK TOPS CASA DE CAMPO OPEN A good start leads to victory
With four blue marlin releases on the first day of fishing, the team aboard
Blackhawk, a 76-foot Viking, needed just one additional fish to emerge victorious in the fourth-annual Casa de Campo Open in the Dominican Republic.
Mama Who, a 77-foot Jarrett Bay, also released five blues overall to place second on time. Princess Lily, a 66-foot Viking, released four blues to land in third place. Dawn Samuels on Princess Lily was the Top Lady Angler, boating a 130pound yellowfin tuna to also win the top gamefish prize. During the tournament, Samuels was able to tag her 100th blue marlin with a TBF spaghetti tag.
“Mama Who was on fire the second day,” says tournament director Robert “Fly” Navarro. “They went 5-for-7 and were a consistent threat all day long. But Blackhawk was able to release their final fish first to earn the win.”
Navarro says the weather and fishing conditions were very good and the bite was on. “The boats averaged between four and eight blue marlin bites during the two days,” he says. “Everyone had a great time, and we made sure to emphasize the positive benefits of tournament fishing.”
SANDMAN WINS AGAIN IN SOUTH FLORIDA The team emerges victorious in JJNBC
The Jimmy Johnson National Billfish Championship is one of the most competitive tournaments anywhere in the world, attracting an astronomically high level of fishing talent to South Florida for its guaranteed $1 million prize purse. This year’s ninth-annual event, held March 3-7, 2020, upheld that stellar history. This year, the event changed its boundaries, giving teams an option to fish a 112-nautical-mile swath from north of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale to Alligator Light in Islamorada, while hosting the ultimate in parties at the iconic
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood. This season, 82 teams joined the fray in the billfish championship, where they released 435 sailfish and one white marlin.
In the end, just 26 seconds separated the first- and second-place teams. Marking their second win in the event, Sandra MacMillan’s Sandman team released 12 sailfish in two days to win a total of $238,000 and a second ring in Jimmy Johnson’s Ring of Honor. MacMillan was also the event’s Top Female Angler; her teammate Robbie Ramirez was named Top Angler. Sandman is a 63-foot Spencer captained by John Louis Dudas. De-Bait-Able finished in second with 12 sailfish, winning $195,000. Owned by Mike Walsh and captained by KJ Zehar, De-Bait-Able is a 62-foot Viking based in Palm Beach, Florida. Reel Estate/Shell Yeah, a 39-foot SeaVee captained by Dallas Twist and owned by Todd Minnick, placed third with 11 sailfish releases, earning $66,500 for their efforts.