2024 Blue Marlin Grand Championship closes with record number of fish caught

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (WALA) - The 2024 Blue Marlin Grand Championship is in the books and it was another one for the record book as well, with 99 blues caught over the weekend. Most of those were released but there were some monsters brought to the scales.

It’s billed the Greatest Show in Sportfishing and one trip to The Wharf for a weigh-in will show you why. With $1.7 million dollars in prize money on the line, you can bet the competition was fierce. Sixty-six teams competed, but only nine of them weighed in a blue marlin and that was what the people were there to see.

“I like that there’s like really, really big fish,” said one young fan who’d managed to find herself a front row spot on the rail to see the scales.

“On our boat, we normally catch specks and reds so seeing these yellow fins and blue marlin, it’s a lot bigger than we normally catch,” Aubrey Williams from Louisiana said.

From the time the scales opened at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 13, 2024 there was almost constant action with Wahoo, Tuna and Dolphin, which are also prize categories. The real thrill began as Wynsong out of Destin hit the scales first with their 496-pound blue marlin.

“It feels good, but I know there’s a couple big ones behind us coming up, but we’ll see,” said team owner, Will Wilson. “We’re like hanging in there. We’ve got two real pretty tunas, so we’ll see what we do.”

Next to back in, to the dock at The Wharf was Devotion from Orange Beach. This team had a nice fish to weigh and also caught and released a blue marlin. Their beauty tipped the scales at an even 577 pounds, moving them into second place. Owner, Joshua Tice said the team hooked up just before dark Friday and were in for a fight.

“We put out a new rainbow runner and about 7:40. It was a slow bite,” Tice recalled. “It was a weird bite, but it ended up being a nice fish. She took it and we knew she was the one. Fought it for almost four hours.”

As darkness began to fall, the crowd only got bigger and so did the fish. Next up was Briar Patch out of Destin with another big blue. You could cut the tension with a knife as the team waited to see if the scale would be their friend. Cheers erupted as the weight showed they’d taken over the second spot by just six tenths of a pound over Devotion.

Hoping to be in contention, Orange Beach-based A Work of Art then brought in a beautiful 528-pound blue marlin to the scales. It didn’t put owner, Art Farve and his team in the money but once again, showed they weren’t to be taken lightly.

Then came the real moment of truth as the only fish left that could take over the top spot came to the scales. Neal Foster and his team, Intense from Mobile had a 124-inch blue marlin to weigh and were hoping to take over the top spot from Orange Beach boat, MISS MA’AM who weighed in a 650.4-pound fish on Friday. Foster said the weekend on the water and the fight they had with the fish was intense as well.

“When you get on that center console, go for three days. We run probably twelve-hundred miles total trip, three days. It takes some grit,” Foster said of his crew and their weekend aboard the 44-foot Contender. “That fish there, the most difficult part was when we got her to the boat, she wouldn’t cooperate. She wanted to keep trying to go under the boat. That was probably the most intense part of it, is when she’d go under there, we couldn’t get a gaff to her, but we got it done. That’s all that matters.”

At 647 pounds Foster’s fish was just 3.4 pounds shy of the first place slot, but good for a solid second place finish. The crew from MISS MA’AM may have weighed their fish Friday, but they were all at the scales to see if their fish would hold up, which it did, and the celebration was on.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a jubilant team owner and angler, Bruce Yancy from MISS MA’AM. “I said I hope it weighs six fifty-point-one. Six-forty-seven’s even better baby.”

The crowd got to wrap up the weigh-in night watching the last blue marlin, caught on board Get Reel come to the scales. One of Orange Beach’s hometown favorite captains, Sonny “Cheese” Alawine didn’t finish in the money, but Cheese said he’s just happy to have been part of the show.

“Just got lucky and found a big girl wanting a ride and gave her a ride home,” Alawine laughed as the night came to a close with his 502-pound fish.

In case you were wondering, if you include all of the payout categories MISS MA’AM bought into, their winning blue marlin will earn them nearly $364,000. Not a bad weekend on the water.

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