Yesterday’s biggest blue marlin didn’t count

The 489-pound blue marlin boated on Pipe Down during yesterday’s first day of the MidAtlantic was a great catch, but actually well short of the day’s best — if it had counted. As Jeff Merrill of the MdiAtlantic noted “The hard luck award for the day and possibly even the tournament goes to Captain Danny Veid of Tarpon Springs, Florida aboard Amarula Sun.  The crew hooked up a huge blue marlin about an hour before lines out and fought the massive billfish before getting it to the boat and cleanly placing two fly gaffs into her.  Unfortunately, the marlin then tried to free itself from the gaffs and in the process got caught in the propellers mutilating the fish.  The MidAtlantic follows IGFA rules which clearly states mutilated fish are disqualified.  Worthy of note the crew of the Amarula Sun self-disqualified the fish which after weighing still pulled the scale down to 808 pounds!”

The MidAtlantic started off with a bang as most of the 181boats competing for a purse of $5,790,020 took advantage of good weather to use one of their three days out of five. Just as we began to wonder if a white marlin big enough to weigh existed, there were two qualifying in that biggest money category. The Viking 80C demo boat hit the 70-pound mark that’s rarely beaten during trolling tournaments, but was still only one pound up on Big Oil.

Large dolphin have also been scarce this summer, but the 45-pounder caught on Liquidity stands a good chance of holding up — and a volume catch on Big Deal took over the next three spots at 25,26 and 32 pounds.

After even MJ’s couldn’t catch a bigeye in the Big Rock Tournament, they’ve been building up to the point where Crisdel had blasts from wolfpacks of bigeyes a couple of times while winning the WMIT. The present leaders of 205 pounds for Marli and 195 pounds on Talkin Trash may not make it to the

finish.

There were lots of marlin releases yesterday, including 8 whites and a blue on Lovin Life;8 whites on Gina Lisa; and 7 whites each on Taylor Jean and Viking 80.

Once again, I’ll be doing a blog after the scales close this evening in order to bring results up to date.

Tomorrow’s inshore forecast is for northeast winds at 10-15 knots before going east 5–10 in the afternoon.

The Queen Mary from Point Pleasant had hot jigging Monday for small blues plus some mixed size bonito. Small jigs worked best.