If you asked anyone “in the know” if it were possible for the Kona fleet to catch 72 marlin in six days, and have only one of those marlin be over 500 pounds, they would probably ask you if you had been drinking — or perhaps if you needed one.
No one can complain about the action in this weekend’s Skins Marlin Derby, because 51 marlin were caught during the tournament.
That’s good.
However, the Skins Marlin Derby is a “big fish” tournament, and not one big fish came in.
That’s not so good.
However, the rules are formatted to allow for this consideration. The team with the most points can win — and win big — in the odd chance that the big marlin do not cooperate.
Captain Boyd DeCoito and his team on Foxy Lady laid down a decisive victory by tagging and releasing seven blue marlin, for a total of 1,400 points. If you are going to win a big fish tournament with points, you might as well do it with a lot of points, and this they did.
Chip Collins from Texas took care of all the angling chores, while Kama De Silva and Mark Shubert aptly ran the cockpit and kept the machine rolling.
Last year’s World Cup winning team on Huntress was hot on their trail the whole time, making for a lot of friendly competition and entertaining banter on the dock, even with a prize purse of more than six figures at stake.
Captain Stymie Epstein led World Cup champion Stephanie Choate to five blue marlin tags and a total of 1,000 points. Nate “the Mate” and Kenton Geer were on the deck.
Close, but a small cigar were captain Carlton Taniyama on Five Star and captain Chip Van Mols on Luna with 800 points each. Warrant Keith and Tom Goodman held down the angling duties on the former, and Jada Holt did the job on the latter.
Four teams had three tags for 600 points, three teams had 400 points and twelve teams had one tag each for 200 points.
For all the final stats and purse distribution log on to konatournaments.com.