Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament founder Peter Fithian admits that his experience being the manager at Augusta National Golf Club heavily influenced his idea more than a half-century ago to host a big-game fishing tournament in Kailua-Kona.
After helping to run the Masters golf tournament, Fithian dreamed of creating an event so significant that it would make people worldwide recognize it as one of the most influential events in the sport.
Fifty-five years and a wealth of memories later, it’s safe to say the HIBT has reached that standard.
“I thought we would go along until people didn’t think it was worth doing anymore. So far that has not happened yet,” Fithian said with a chuckle. “Clearly, when you are 30 years old and are sitting around thinking about putting on a fishing tournament, you never imagine it could be something that goes on for 50 years, I can assure you of that.”
The 55th edition of the big-game fishing tournament, built on prestige and strict International Game Fish Association (IGFA) rules for world records, starts fishing Monday and continues through Friday.
Each day, the teams will line up across Kailua Bay at 7:30 a.m. and return to the pier at 4:30 p.m. for weigh-ins.
The field of 33 teams has an international flair, with multiple teams from Australia, China, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu participating alongside multiple squads from across the U.S.
While all the teams are shooting for the ultimate goal of being crowned HIBT champions, the event also hands out hardware in a variety of other categories. This year, the tournament will debut a new scoring system to make the once-convoluted process clearer.
“It is a little bit like a baseball scoreboard but a little more heterogeneous. You are not just watching someone hit a line drive to the outfield and someone scores. It is a bit more complicated than that here,” Fithian said. “There are so many things we are accounting for at any moment — almost six going at one time — so I think that is why it needed to be. What we have done is invested in a complicated, but easier to manage, scoring system. Monday will be the first test of that.”
Last year, Old South Marlin Club East Coast I took first place in a come-from-behind victory, boating a 588-pound Pacific blue marlin on the final day.
While a 588-pound catch is nothing to scoff at, catching a grander — a 1,000-pound or more marlin — is the game-changer every angler is hoping for.
“Seeing a 500-pound fish come up behind the boat is enough to really get your attention, but I think the grander has become the four-minute mile of fishing,” Fithian said.
Despite construction on the pier, the weigh-ins are expected to proceed as scheduled. Each afternoon, spectators can enjoy seeing the teams display their spoils of the hunt on the scale. However, tag-and-release catches also play a significant role in the points race and help in prepetuating the tournament’s staunch support for fish conservation.
In 1986, HIBT introduced a tag-and-release initiative, where tag-and-release catches award anglers with valuable points to teams that have tagged marlin under 300 pounds and released them back to the ocean.
Partnering with the Great Marlin Race in 2009 added another dimension to the tag-and-release. The objective of the research of the GMR is to discover where blue marlin go after being caught. When the tags pop off the fish — after 120-180 days — the fish that has traveled the farthest wins. The information has paid dividends for not only the research group but also the HIBT organizers.
“I got a little nervous this year planning the dates,” said Fithian, who decided to move up the date of the event this year. “We have been doing the Great Marlin Race with the tagging and we have found that a lot of the marlin were leaving in late July. It started to scare me. Frankly, we don’t know exactly how many marlins are here, but the ones we had tagged were taking off south.”
The public is invited to the tournament’s opening ceremonies from 4-5:30 p.m. Sunday at Kailua Pier.