What an exciting few days at the 8th annual Barta Boys & Girls Club Billfish Tournament. Ran Johnson won the Dolphin Category with a 40.3lb dolphin! Ran said it took over an hour to bring it in but he knew he could do it and he did. Laurel Matthews was close behind on the Carolina Time with a 37.08lb dolphin and she also released her first sailfish. She and Dad went for a swim thanks to Tred and Dean Travis Clarke alone with a lot of first time billfish release anglers. Hunter Draughon not only released a few billfish on the Bill Collector he also weighed in the largest wahoo at 26.6lbs. This year the tournament even saw very few tuna, Avery Struyk on the Piracy weighed in a 10.6 black fin tuna and Laurin Schad on the Impulse weighed in a 17.2lb king mackerel to finish off the game fish division.
The Billfish Category was really hot with 37 billfish released in two days. Eleven billfish on the first day followed by 26 on Saturday. It was a back to back fight between the Sea Hag, Bill Collector and Impulse. On Friday, Kylie Schad released the first Impulse Sail and a few hours later her sister Cara Schad released a sail. In between both of their releases Logan Carter released a sail on the Bill Collector and that was followed by Landon Badgett on the Sea Hag releasing a sail. At the end of the day Impulse had two fish, followed by Bill Collector and Sea Hag.
When Saturday’s action started Sea Hag had a release just 16 minutes into the day followed by Impulse at 9am. Bill Collector released another fish at 10:25 and Impulse released on at 11:57. That would end up being Impulses last release of the day. Not to be outdone, Bill Collector came back with a double header both Hunter Draughon and Logan Carter on the rods made for a quick double release. Sea Hag and Captain Alan Willis were waiting in the wings and released a sail at 12:21. They secured their lead at 12:42pm when they had a double header and released both fish. This put them in 1st place with 5 releases followed by Impulse and Bill Collector each with 4. With only 20 minutes left in the tournament Capt. Stephen Draughon of the Bill Collector put his son Hunter on their 5th sailfish of the tournament to capture 2nd place just ahead of Impulse. Now that is a “photo” finish!
Our 1st year inshore tournament was also very exciting, Samantha Wainwright on the Fishing Partner weighed a whopping 4.02lb Spanish Mackerel and the three remaining Spanish all weighed in the 3lb range. Bluefish was won by 10 Bravo with a 1.22lb fish and the Pin Fish winner was Hunter Rice with a 0.62lb fish on the Genesis.
Thank you to all of the sponsors, participants, volunteers, auction donors, and anyone involved with the tournament it was a fantastic weekend.
A special thank you to our website host John Eppehimer who donated the cost of the new website build and made a generous donation and to Renato Luiz Goncalves “Jer” for all of his hard work, long hours and generosity for building the site and helping us keep it up and running throughout the week.
