Swansboro Rotary Blue Water Tournament
Capt. Jerry Jackson and the crew of the "Ava D" hauled a 424.4 lb. blue marlin to the scales on the Morehead City waterfront to take first place blue marlin and more than $50,000 home from the Swansboro Rotary Blue Water Tournament. Their fish fell for a Black Bart lure in 100 fathoms north of the Big Rock.
“It took about two weeks,” said Havelock, NC’s Jerry Jackson, owner/captain of the “Ava D,” referring to the hour he and his crew had to wait for the scales to open in order to weigh the 424.4 lb. fish that earned them the blue marlin division win in the 30th Annual Swansboro Rotary Blue Water Tournament.
“We wrapped that fish completely in brand new towels,” Jackson added. The tense wait and ruined towels proved to be well worthwhile, however, as Jackson and Kenny Lane, Teddy Guthrie, Gray Hardison, Steve Chappell, and Henry Tracer, the remainder of the “Ava D” crew, took home $58,400 for their efforts.
After checking a Roffer’s report the night before, the anglers decided to focus on an area north of the Big Rock where they saw a temperature edge.
“We were north of the Rock,” Jackson explained, “but most of the boats were fishing way north. We were about dead between them.”
Plying a slight temperature break that ran along the 100 fathom curve, the “Ava D” crew found slow trolling at first that turned around in an instant when they had a double blue marlin strike just after 11:00.
“We didn’t get a good look at the other one,” Jackson said. “We pulled the hooks on it pretty quick.”
A Black Bart lure in a secret color fooled the fish that stayed buttoned, and after pulling off the other fish, the crew got down to the business of fighting the big fish.
“He almost completely dumped an 80 before we got everything in and could start backing down on him,” Jackson continued, “but we backed down and got most of the line back. That fish never went deep, just stayed up top and fought it out.”
Their fish had jumped three times after biting, but stayed in the water to slug it out with angler Gray Hardison after its initial acrobatics.
When the crew finally got the fish boatside, they could see it was close to the tournament’s 110” or 400 lb. minimum size limit for fish boated and brought to the scales.
“We measured it beside the boat and kept coming up between 110.5 and 111 inches,” Jackson said. “We were pretty sure he was going to make the length, so we decided to boat him.”
Amazingly, the crew never gaffed the marlin, using the leader and the fish’s bill to slide it through the 61’ Gillikin’s transom door.
“That was a pretty special time,” said Jackson.
With their big fish in the boat, the anglers headed for Beaufort Inlet and the scales at Big Rock Landing, arriving an hour early for the 3:00 opening of the scales.
The team fished again on Sunday, heading for a likely-looking patch of water south of the Big Rock, but went strike-less. Fortunately for the crew, their fish was the only one brought to the scales during the event, handily earning them the blue marlin crown.
Emerald Isle’s “Blue Eyes” team, fishing a brand new 57’ Shearline sportfishermen, took the Billfish Points category, setting free a pair of white marlin and a blue marlin over the tournament’s two fishing days.
Fishing with a large crew including several of the Swansboro Rotary Club Officers, owner/captain Billy Farrington and mates Stevie Hicks and Justin Cleve headed north with many of the tournament’s boats on Saturday, releasing a white marlin that got them on the board.
Sunday, they chose a new game plan.
“A new Roffer’s chart came out today,” Farrington explained, “and it put us right on them. We fished straight out of Beaufort around the 600 Line.”
After releasing another white marlin around 1:30 that afternoon, the anglers got the strike they’d been looking for around 2:45, when a blue marlin inhaled a blue/white trolling lure behind the Shearline’s transom.
Angler Bobby Weeks (who caught the winning fish in last year’s Big Rock tournament) settled into the chair with the fish, and he battled the estimated 225 lb. blue for 18 minutes before the team got the release that nailed down their win.
“That fish jumped right after the bite,” Farrington continued. “He pretty much stayed in the water after that. We backed down on him and were able to get the leader and get the hooks out.”
The 300 release points the crew earned from their blue were enough to nudge them past the “Ava D” in the Billfish Points category, earning them $30,551.
Albert Daniel, from Selma, NC, and the “Marlin Fever” took all three spots in the event’s tuna division, weighing in 51, 53, and 66 lb. yellowfins to earn them over $18,000 that has accumulated as no one has weighed in a yellowfin in the event in three years.
A 58.40 lb. dolphin topped that category for the “Rameseas,” narrowly edging past the “Ashley Lauren” crew’s 58.20 lb. bull.
The “Bizzy B” earned the win in the tournament’s wahoo category with a 27.60 lb. fish.
The Swansboro Rotary Memorial Day event has traditionally been a king mackerel and blue water tournament, but this year the organizers decided to move the king competition (and a new inshore competition) to October 8-9 to take advantage of the better king mackerel bite.
The Blue Water Tournament attracted 55 boats for 2010, which helped the event to generate money for the Rotary’s scholarship programs. To date, the club has given away over $625,000 to local college-bound students.
