IB Hooked - May 25, 2007

Since y’all have had some time to
sober up and reflect on what y’all
did on May 12 in the alderidiot
election, I decided to ask the Fish Lobby
what their take was on the mess. The critters
just snickered and told me that the
lore handed up buy their ancestors when
they occupied the Sandspit foretold of
events to come when the two-legged critters
took over. They also observed that humans
were pack hunters and going from a
beauty pageant format to a heads up forplace
format guaranteed the nasty, ugly
mess that was the last election will get
worse. Remembering the first WCW Smack
Down race back in ’03, I recall that the
first order of bidness for the new Board of
Alderidiots was a unanimous vote to return
to the beauty pageant format in hopes
of restoring some semblance civility to the
process. Oh, well.

Y’all probably have heard that the circle
hook requirement for billfish tournaments
has been put on hold where highspeed
trolling with dead bait is concerned.
Thank Randy Blankinship, formerly of
Parks & Wildlife and now with NOAA Fisheries.
He took a pretty good beating at the
hands of the enviros on the Highly Migratory
Species Advisory Panel. But he stood
his ground and prevailed for the good of
the recreational fisherman. The point he
made was that the use of circle hooks in
live bait was a no-brainer, but because of
the tactics involved with high speed
trolling (8-10 knots) hooking a billfish
would be next to impossible. The fact that
observations proved this point and continuing
studies seem to indicate that this
tactic rarely resulted in a gut-hooked billfish,
the rule was unnecessary. The final
decision on this crap will be made late this
fall, stay tuned.

Word from Cabo and the ROLEX/IGFA
Offshore Championship is mixed. Seems
a feisty li’l rag by the name of the Gringo
Gazette wrote a snarky piece last year to
the effect that all these folks from all over
the world spent enormous amounts of
dinero to go fish and all they can win is a
friggin’ watch with their name engraved
on it. Well, the Swiss didn’t appreciate the
dig and withdrew their name as a
sponser. I guess the pen can be eviler
than the sword, that and we may have
proof the euros ain’t got no sense of
humor.

Anyhow, day three of the IGFA Offshore
World Championship is underway as I
write this scat, and some locals are in the
thick of it. Team Blake Bunk Memorial, socalled
because they won the 2006 tournament
that was a qualifier and comprised
of Jimmy Lawson, Glen Jarvis, Tate Jarvis,
Todd Jarvis and Kelly Hall, are in a tie for
fourth place with 1,800 points. They released
four striped marlin on day 1, and
two stripeys on day 2. Each are worth 300
points. The other teams are from Turks
and Caicos, Brazil and Bermuda. The
leader is a Cal team with nine stripeys released
and a yellowfin donated to an orphanage
with 2,745.6 points. Then comes a
Mexican with eight, and a Italian with
seven. Just behind with five releases are
New Zealand, Spain, Kenya and Portugal.
Total of 63 teams and judgin’ from the
leader board, more than a few are on a
cantina crawl lookin’ for Patron.
This weekend, once again the Alphabet
Soup Gang better known as the South
Texas Big Game Fishing Club or STBGFC
for short will host the Blake Bunk Memorial
Billfish Tournament at the Sea Roach
Marina. It is a Cabo qualifier, the only one
round these parts. Weigh-in is over by
Dirty Al’s Saturday and Sunday from 6
p.m. to 7:30 p.m.