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New Blue Marlin Record
Posted By: King
Date: Saturday, 8-16-08, at 4:58 p.m.
Boat lands 1,228.5-pound marlin; may be N.C. record
By Lee Tolliver
The Virginian-Pilot
August 16, 2008Trey Irvine of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., caught one of the biggest Atlantic blue marlin ever recorded Friday to earn his team a final-day victory in the 25th annual Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament.
Irvine’s fish weighed 1,228.5 pounds and is a pending North Carolina record for the species. The current record is a 1,142-pounder caught by Jack Herrington in 1974. The world record weighed 1,402.2 pounds and was caught in 1992 off the coast of Brazil.
According to tournament director Kevin Crum, the fish will net Irvine’s team “at least $500,000. The team was registered in all categories, so they stand to make a lot of money.”
Any blue marlin brought to the docks that weighs more than 600 pounds earns one point per pound.
“The most points any team had going into (Friday) was 280 for released fish,” Crum said. “This is causing quite a stir down here.”
Irvine’s team hadn’t caught a fish the entire week of the offshore tournament that featured 99 teams.
“So we decided to go for the Hail Mary,” said teammate Paul Spencer of the Outer Banks. Spencer built Irvine’s boat, “Mimi.”
“We went to an area that I know about that really hasn’t been holding too many fish,” Spencer said. “But it has the chance for a big fish.”
Spencer said the crew put out all of its biggest baits on its largest tackle in hopes that something big would bite.
It did.
“It was slick calm and we saw it come up and take the bait. We knew it was big,” said Spencer, who added that Irvine had left the tournament site for another obligation. “The first few times the fish got air and we saw it, we figured that it might be around 800 pounds. The next few times, we all thought that maybe it would be 1,000.
“When we finally got the fish in the boat after two hours, we all guessed that it might go 1,100. But we’re absolutely amazed at what we did.”
Spencer said that catching such a big blue marlin in his home waters was extremely rewarding for the team.
“I went down to Australia and saw one caught that went 1,120,” Spencer said. “So coming home and catching one this big in your own back yard is really something special. I think this is something that’s going to be talked about around here for a long, long time.”
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