Fishing tourneys adapt for continued success
On a picture perfect Sunday afternoon at Wrightsville Beach, about 30 people, anglers and their families, mill about at the 40th annual Cape Fear Blue Marlin Tournament check-in station. As the day comes to a close, T-shirts are returned to their boxes. Tales from the weekend are shared.
A pickup truck pulls up outside the tent. Its arrival garners little interest until the man in the passenger seat quickly shuffles through. He's carrying a white bag in his right hand, the length and width of a set of golf clubs – and apparently the weight of them, too – his flip-flops scuffing off the concrete as he passes.
Heads turn. A woman quickly opens her purse, looking for her cell phone. There's a fish in that bag, headed to the scales.
The 40-plus-pound wahoo is announced, then the pictures start. A dock that was barren five minutes ago now has two dozen people lining up to shake hands and see the fish firsthand. Just as the fish is about to come down, one final person comes to the dock.
"Can you hold on just a second?" the woman asks kindly. Her bright-pink cell phone snaps the photo she wants, and she thanks the weighmaster and angler for their time.
Across Southeastern North Carolina, this scene will play out hundreds of times over the coming months, as the tournament schedule hits its stride from now through October. How the fish, and the fishermen themselves, get to local docks is a story many years in the making, including plenty of ebb and flow.
Somehow, fishermen are easy to recognize. Maybe it's the different color of their tan. Or the way the sunglasses sit on their head. Or their casual attitude near the water. Sometimes, it's the T-shirt on their back, from a long-ago tournament. No matter how you figure it out, it's easy to see who's in charge. Or who should be.
Many of the people who form the backbone of today's fishing tournaments have been on area waters since the mid-1970s. Some were kids at the time, working at local marinas and fishing with their fathers or family friends. Others started as mates for the captains and owners of the time.
Back then, a 21-foot boat was more than enough to get out – no matter the conditions or distance – in a quest for the biggest fish around.
"It's just incredible," said Rob Tennille, a Wrightsville Beach native who rattles off names of longtime captains and their vessels with ease. "If you took teenagers now on the boats we were on back then, they'd take your children from you. You rode out on a leather chair. I sat on a five-gallon bucket."
"They fished 25(-foot) Bertrams (boats), 31 Bertrams," said Bobby Brown, another longtime area resident and director of the annual Cape Fear Blue Marlin Tournament, "and if you didn't carry extra fuel, you'd run out 5-10 miles from the beach. And they'd go when it was 30 knots. I was part of that as a kid. We did that. Now? Heck no."
The caution-to-the-wind past is discussed with a smile, survival a small badge of honor. As the key players survived their wild times, they bought their own boats: a little bigger, a little faster, a little nicer. The technology on board the boats improved, so did bait, rods and line.
With that group taking on a larger role in fishing tournaments in southern North Carolina, participants grew steadily. The population influx from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s – and the housing those new residents needed – fueled a surge in prize money for multi-day, billfish tournaments and the birth of many local events with smaller boats. The U.S. Open King Mackerel Tournament in Southport, for example, ballooned to nearly 550 entries in that time frame.
But the same economic factors that bolstered area fishing tournaments turned against them in the mid-2000s. Soaring prices – fuel that was 30 to 40 cents per gallon in the early 1980s now stands at $4 – and the halt of the local housing market sent some tournaments into extinction, and others to the brink.
"There's some things you can't stop," said Brant McMullan, who runs tournaments for the Ocean Isle Fishing Center in Brunswick County. "The core people that fish: Eight years ago, it was 150 people, no matter what. Now it's 80. That's just the way it is. A fishing tournament, as unglamorous as it sounds, it still is just a business."
The Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament out of Morehead Cityproudly boasts of a prize package that regularly tops $1 million. The Cape Fear Marlin tournament passed out more than $40,000 for its 15-boat field earlier this year. While many mackerel or pier events don't have the big-dollar prizes at the top of their purse structure, they try to hand out money to more anglers.
But no matter how big or small the prizes are, many tournament anglers are simply on a quest to break even.
"It would be nice if it was more affordable," said longtime off-shore fisherman Carroll Thomas. "You take the fuel, the dockage fee, the cost of boats, it's gotten so expensive, it makes it hard for a lot of people who want to participate. Some of us are just gonna do it regardless of what it costs."
Thomas, who's owned boats since the late 1980s and participated in local events since the late 1970s, said he and other longtime competitors will always pick and choose their desired events, but won't go much beyond that, similar to financially planning for a yearly family vacation.
"If people are determined and dedicated to fish a tournament every year, that's not a big deal," he said. "But they might not fish any other tournaments. If they know how much and when it is, they'll fish just their favorites."
Entry fees for off-shore tournaments climb into the thousands, and to have a chance at all categories at a mackerel or dolphin event runs around $500. Competing on a regular basis simply isn't cost-effective in an economy bouncing back from recession.
"We want more opportunity for people to win a check," said Brian Schoenwiesner, a local mackerel tournament fisherman and director of a new tournament for local nonprofit SHARE. "A lot of people that used to fish tournaments don't feel like they can compete versus the 36-, 38-foot boats. … People want to have a shot at making their money back."
The good news is that those who do want to fish have their pick of tournamentslong past the summer months.For example, while Big Rock wraps up its weeklong run this weekend, the Ocean Isle Fishing Center's annual Jolly Mon Classic kicks off. The Cape Fear Blue Marlin tournament and the new SHARE event not only shared a weekend, but almost the same space, setting up their weighing stations on either side of the Intracoastal Waterway in Wrightsville Beach.
"It's apples and oranges," McMullan said. "They don't ever cross each other. Very rarely do you have two events of any size that compete. … There aren't a lot of guys that are going to do everything (off-shore and in-shore). Most of it's based on the kind of boat they have or the path they're going down."
With a large number of events fighting for a small pool of money from fishermen recovering from a stagnant economy, tournaments do all they can to keep people coming back.
"We try to listen to what our anglers are telling us that they want to see," said Karen Sphar of the U.S. Open King Mackerel Tournament, held annually in October in Southport. "We try to look after all of them. We're trying to make it a family event so when people look at the US Open and think, ‘I can't compete,' that's not the case. I think that's a big plus, you don't have to have a go-fast boat to get what you want. If you're in a johnboat, you can compete next to the guy with the three engines."
With the SHARE event, Schoenwiesner has tried to use his experience on the water to draw in people who wouldn't fish normally, yet continue to cater to those who want to fish for the glory, and a nice fat check.
"We have a silent auction, our party is open to the public," he said. "But we also guarantee cash for the first-place prize. The cash prizes are what we feel attract the fishermen themselves."
The SHARE event has had from 47 to 65 boats in its first three years, a good start with room to grow. For his fellow fishermen across the harbor that first weekend in June at the Cape Fear Marlin event, it's been a case of climbing back up.
Brown shifted the tournament back to the first weekend of June, allowed boats to compete from other marinas. The result was an increase in the number of boats, and nine marlin caught and released.
Sphar would approve. She believes the US Open's success comes from both its location – "the kings are here," she said matter-of-factly – and its consistency. October marks her 25th anniversary with the U.S. Open, and as long as the weather holds out annually, she always knows where she's going to be in the fall.
"There's a lot of history because it's been going on for so many years," she said. "People know when it is, and it's one of those things that people want to do. They say, ‘Hey, when's the U.S. Open? Well, it's the first week of October. It's the way it is."
Tournaments have also tried to expand their base. Most events include junior and women's divisions, giving each group their own set of prizes, and in some cases, their own day to fish. The Big Rock's Keli Wagner Lady Angler event has grown to at least 50 boats and kicks off the tournament week each year. It has been won twice in the past three years by a woman from Wilmington.
The Jolly Mon in Ocean Isle Beach gives children two ways to participate: an on-shore day Thursday, then time on the boats on Friday before the adults take over on Saturday and Sunday.
Tournament directors say letting as manay people as possible fish is just common sense.
"I have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, they're involved in the junior event and then both kids will go out on Friday. They want to fish," MacMullen said. "We've got much more things involved with youth and the women.
"And that's the thing (for the future). If Mom wants to go fishing, by God we're going fishing. Mom makes the call. That's all dad is looking for. Normally he's begging for approval and if she says we're going, he's set."
In the end, however, fishing is still about the fish. The big fish story – and the accompanying photos – will pass down from generation to generation. The prize money doesn't hurt either.
Today, though, the story is told in new ways.
Tennille can remember back to his youth, when fishing tournament days at Wrightsville Beach brought crowds to the marina. More fish were hauled in then, and captains radioed back to shore, their catches signified on a flagpole folks could see across the island.
It meant more chances for oohs and aahs at the dock when a large fish was hoisted onto the scales and weighed. The flip side, he said, was the mass of dead fish on the dock, with nowhere to go. He recalled a photo from the late 1970s, giant blue marlin stacked like cordwood after their turn in front of the crowd.
"It wasn't pretty," he said.
That story, and so many others like it, fueled a turn toward conservation. The Cape Fear Marlin tournament is now a part of the Governor's Cup, a statewide event that promotes saving fish and catch-and-release programs. If you catch a blue marlin then let it go, for example, you get points in a yearlong competition. You also fly a small flag signifying your accomplishment.
So, instead of "hanging fish," competitors "hang the laundry." It's great for the fish, not so great sometimes for trying to drum up excitement for those on the shoreline.
"It's pretty hard," Brown said. "Everyone says you have to kill a blue marlin at Wrightsville to bring a crowd in, and it does. … But half of our entries are in the Governor's Cup. That's been a good thing."
For those going after smaller fish, it's the same problem, but from a different angle. King mackerel numbers have been down for a while, part of the ebb and flow of life. Schoenwiesner, a former Division of Marine Fisheries employee, said more mackerel this year signals hope for future events. Tournaments have also made sure to expand their prize structure to include more than just the main fish on the docket.
"Without people weighing fish in, you don't have any excitement," MacMullen said. "You've been out there busting your butt, fighting the fish and the elements. How do you make the fishermen feel like they're kings for the day? If you didn't get a 30-pounder and win, we still want you to weigh your 10-15-pounder. You worked hard, you just didn't get as lucky. … The more boats coming to the weigh-in means a better show for spectators, which is what you want."
Schoenwiesner said the addition of a digital scale that allows everyone to see the weight of the fish helped drive interest this year. The more folks that can get in on the action, the better.
"That's where the social aspect comes in," he said. "Once the fishermen come in, they can see what kind of fish, how big they are. We had some 40-plus-pound cobia this year. Not many people get to see that.
"More people can get involved because there are more prizes. You've got to find that balance between the kill and the competition. We know that you can't make everyone happy, but we're sure as hell gonna try."