Controversies Aside, the Bisbee Keeps Reeling Them In
Most people who visit this anglers’ paradise at Baja California’s tip bring only the essentials: light clothing, suntan lotion and a rod-and-reel or two.
Scott Monroe brought this and more.
“I brought my investment banker,” he said with a smile. “Just in case.... “
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... It’s a little past 2 p.m. on the third and final day of the 21st Bisbee’s Black and Blue Marlin Jackpot Tournament. The sun is beating relentlessly down upon a rippling sea, and upon three fishermen who call themselves the Texas Marlin Maniacs.
U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is ending just as Monroe, in the fighting chair, has latched onto exactly what his team had been looking for: an enormous billfish dashing toward the horizon.
All Monroe has to do is reel it in.
Reeling in a big marlin, of course, is rarely easy, given their extraordinary power. Doing so with so much on the line--in this case more than $500,000 as the potential tournament winner--makes the battle that much more intense.
But doing so with a colossal freighter bearing down on a comparatively minuscule yacht, the 46-foot Stimulator, brings an urgency that borders on the ridiculous.
Yet, the rotund developer from Beaumont, Texas, doesn’t waver.
Drenched with sweat, pumping and reeling, turning occasionally to check on the progress of the freighter, he ultimately brings his quarry to leader, whereupon it is dutifully dispatched by the crew and hauled aboard.
The freighter, having closed to within 250 yards, passes without incident.
The Stimulator returns to port with a broad-shouldered black marlin that will tip the marina scale, amid the cheers of a partially intoxicated audience, at 518 pounds.
Asked if his prize is a blue or black marlin, Monroe says he isn’t sure.
“I think it’s green,” he adds with a laugh.
An appropriate answer? At tournament’s end the Texas Marlin Maniacs will be presented a six-foot-long check cut to the preposterous sum of $684,265.
But first, Monroe has some answering to do....
... The polygraph test is a necessary evil in big-money contests such as the Bisbee’s Black and Blue, regarded as the world’s richest billfish tournament. A member of each placing team is tested.
Monroe, 41, is the first in the hot seat, five hours out of the fighting chair. He thinks nothing of it until the grilling begins.
“It was a genuine Texas barbecue,” he will say after being told he had passed. “That guy kept slapping mustard on my [butt].”
So serious is the inquiry by T.V. O’Malley, a polygraph administrator from Fayetteville, N.C., that Monroe’s left arm turns “ice cold” and his pulse races to 120, leading O’Malley to believe that the angler is about to suffer a heart attack.
That doesn’t happen, but it would have surprised nobody--and certainly not tournament director Wayne Bisbee--had something so dramatic occurred.
This is, after all, a Black and Blue, an event that has a flair for theatrics, on and off the water.
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Perhaps most notable among Bisbee moments occurred in 1990, when actor Willie Aames spent 211/2 hours, on the final day, fighting a 457-pound black marlin. Since an angler cannot receive help during the fight, Aames could not even take a bathroom break.
More than 1,000 cheered as the boat, which had been towed 23 miles by the billfish, approached the dock in the predawn darkness, and as the crew carried the exhausted fisherman, his clothes soaked with sweat and urine, off on a mattress.
His marlin was the second heaviest overall but because his team had weighed another on Day 1, it claimed a first-place purse of more than $200,000.
The Bisbee since has featured everything from fisticuffs at the docks to seasickness on the water. It has been held in seas both calm and rough, and nobody knows this better than Bisbee.
Still fresh in his mind, and in the minds of everyone during this year’s tournament--it was held Oct. 24-26--was what happened last year. The team aboard Minerva III, which brought in a 534-pound blue marlin on the final day, was disqualified after the angler reportedly confessed, during his polygraph test, that the deckhand had touched the line above the leader on several occasions during the fight, which is against all major tournament rules.
The angler’s statements cost the team a tournament-record first-place purse of $989,910, which went to After Midnight, which had logged what it believed to be the second-place fish at 500 pounds. (There were 234 vessels last year, compared to 155 this year, resulting in the bigger purse.)
According to Bisbee, one of Minerva III’s anglers expressed his displeasure by hurling a heavy margarita glass against the office wall with such force that it sent the tournament crew diving for cover, thinking a gun had been shot.
Minerva Smith, on whose boat the disqualified team had been fishing, said she doesn’t believe the story as told by Bisbee and boycotted this year’s tournament. She stopped short of charging Bisbee with maliciously favoring an already-wealthy U.S. team aboard After Midnight over the Mexican crew aboard Minerva III. (The captain’s share alone would have been about $80,000.)
But she sharply criticized Bisbee for not having an independent rules committee and for not letting the captain or deckhand tell their side of the story.
There have been other controversies and Bisbee goes to court in December to battle two members of a low-placing team claiming the team deserved a higher placing in the 1999 Bisbee.
In 1999, the second-place team aboard Chupacabra accused the first-place team, Big T’s, of dumping a smaller marlin at sea, after catching a larger one, to avoid a penalty assessed if the smaller fish weighed less than 300 pounds. (Teams lose points for killing marlin weighing less than 300 pounds.)
Chupacabra also disputed the size of its marlin. It was originally weighed with two ropes--the extra one used to bend the body to keep the head from touching the ground--at 597.5 pounds. It was then re-weighed with only one rope at 596 pounds.
Big T’s winning marlin, weighed with only one rope tied to its tail, weighed 597 pounds.
Chupacabra, which won $685,475 to Big T’s $729,890, is not involved in the lawsuit.
Asked about all this, Bisbee muttered something about going to work at McDonald’s.
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The Bisbee has indeed come a long way since the first one 21 years ago.
“That one had six boats competing for $10,000,” Bisbee says. “My dad’s team won and my brother was the skipper.”
Robert Bisbee Sr. founded the event and recently turned control over to son Wayne as director, and daughter Tricia as co-director.
Under the current format, teams of up to four pay $5,000 to enter. They then have the option of entering daily jackpots of $200, $500, $1,000 and $2,000.
Lethal Weapon, for example, accepted a check for $395,190 this year after weighing a 350-pound blue marlin caught by Eric Hill of Alpine, Calif. It was the biggest billfish on Day 2 and the team was entered across the board. But it didn’t even qualify in the money as one of the top five marlin caught overall.
In all, 155 teams with 734 anglers competed for $1,666,070. They caught 110 marlin, 92 of which were released. The other 18 were donated to the local food bank. The smaller field is being attributed to the events of Sept. 11 and to Hurricane Juliette a month later.
In fact, damage caused by Juliette almost led to the cancellation of the Bisbee, which would have done even more harm to this sun-drenched resort city.
Mexico accesses a 21% tax on all winnings, 6% of that going to the state of Baja California Sur. Moreover, the tournament pumps about $5 million directly into the local economy every year, and economic multipliers put the figure closer to $10 million, according to one study.
As for Monroe, after taxes and dividing Stimulator’s winnings between teammates, Capt. Jay Bush and two Mexican deckhands, he was presented a check for $144,000, which he promptly turned over to his friend the investment banker.
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Fish Report D15