Bermuda Triple Crown: Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament
Bermuda Triple Crown Billfish championship is an open fishing tournament that has three legs:
• Bermuda Billfish Blast
• Bermuda Big Game Classic
• Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament
Anglers can participate in each of the legs independently with its own entree fee or compete in all the three events for the Bermuda Triple Crown Championship (BTC).
Rules: All the teams competing in the BTC tournament follow the rules of each of the individual legs. Points from all the three legs are added up and the team that accumulates maximum points becomes the winner. Incase of a tie, the team that gathers the points first gets the trophy. Boats are not required to have the same team representative or anglers in each of the three events.
Scoring: Each qualifying event has the same scoring system for billfish. There are 500 points for blue marlin releases and one point per pound for every blue marlin that exceeds the minimum weight. White marlin release gets 200 points; sailfish and spearfish are 100 points each. There is also penalty for underweight fish release. For underweight blue marlin the penalty is 500 points plus two points for every pound the fish is underweight.
In Bermuda, 23 boats
headed offshore to compete in the 38th Annual
Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament. This
is the third and final leg of the 2011 Triple
Crown series. At 8:10 am, "Fish On" hooked-up to
a blue marlin and it seemed that they might
release the first blue marlin for the third
consecutive tournament, but this time things
were different because it was a Monster.
While "Fish On" battled
away, El Cazador scored the first points with a
blue marlin release at 8:49 am. Then "Queen of
Hearts" hooked into a big fish at 9:11 am. After
a battle of well over an hour, Queen of Hearts
had the blue marlin in the boat at 10:31 am, and
soon reported short length measurements of
118/64. The big blue marlin subsequently tipped
the scales at 560 lbs and was good enough to win
the Day One Blue Marlin Jackpot worth $13,933.
Congratulations to Capt. Peter Olander and owner
angler Walter Cross. These guys have a solid
track record of hanging winners, this is the
fourth time they have weighed a blue marlin down
at Barr's Bay Park in a Triple Crown event.
Prior catches included the 728 pounder that won
the 2007 World Cup, as well as a 572 pounder
that took heaviest blue marlin honors in the
2008 Sea Horse, and a 534 pounder that took a
daily in the 2006 Classic.
Meanwhile, Fish On remained locked in battle.
Eventually, after over three hours, they had the
huge blue marlin on the leader, but it made its
escape when things came slack soon after. The
team did get the video and points for the
release, but this was a very large blue marlin,
which they were probably disappointed to lose.
Instead of crying about it though, this team got
back to business and at 1:51 pm they were
hooked-up again; releasing a blue marlin at 2:05
pm. The two blue marlin releases were good
enough for Fish On to win the Day One Billfish
Release Points Jackpot worth $13,300 - so they
pretty much swapped one daily for another, a
nice consolation and they sit in first place at
the end of Day One. It is also the second
release daily that Fish On has won in this
year's Triple Crown Series.
Uno Mas also released two blue marlin, which is
very significant in the Triple Crown series
standings as it elevates them from 3rd place
with 2,200 points, up into the overall lead with
3,200 points - five hundred ahead of Sea Toy and
six hundred ahead of the defending Series
champion Click Through.
On Day One, there was also blue marlin releases
recorded for Rameseas and Over Budget, and a
white marlin release for Georgie Girl.
The tally for Day One is 1 blue marlin boated, 7
blue marlin released and a white released.
