The Saint Martin Billfish Tournament kicks off on June 10th at Marina Fort Louis in Marigot, Saint Martin. The Caribbean’s finest fishing teams will be battling it out on the famous Marlin Boulevard from the 11th to the 14th of June. The 2014 marlin season is shaping up to be a great one. This year there will be over $100,000 in cash and prizes up for grabs, which will make for some intense competition! Not to mention that The Saint Martin Billfish Tournament is a qualifying event for the IGFA Offshore World Championship. This year the Tournament Record prize is a beautiful 2014 Contender Bay Boat, sponsored by Contender. Last year’s event was a great one that saw the competition decided on the final day of fishing. Boats are expected from all corners of the region; last year boats came from as far as Florida!
In 2013 Budget Marine started sponsoring the ‘Fun’ prizes for largest Tuna, Wahoo, and Dolphin, it was such a great hit that it will continue this year with some really great prizes to be won. Two exciting new prize categories have been added for 2014: Best Junior Angler – for anglers 15 years old and younger, and Best Female Angler. We hope that this will encourage more children and women to get involved in our wonderful sport. One cannot forget last year’s Marlin Jackpot prize that ended up being an impressive $17,000! Well this prize will be up for grabs again this year; the size of this prize is completely dependent on the amount of boats that choose to enter this prize category, so as the old saying goes: ‘You gotta be in it to win it!’
Along with the great food, drinks, and awesome company that everyone enjoys at the tournament village year after year, this year we have stepped it up a notch by bringing you 3 amazing nights of concerts! Kicking things off on the evening of June 11th will be reggae sensation British Dependency, followed by soca legends Onyan on the evening of June 12th and to bring the event to a spectacular close on June 14th will be St. Martin’s very own, legendary, Orange Grove!
The Saint Martin Billfish Tournament has formed a great new partnership with the Les Fuits de Mer Association. They will be at the village every day conducting various studies on all fish brought to the weigh station. This is intended to be a long term relationship which will allow them to collect invaluable information on the pelagic species that pass through our region every year. Les Fruits de Mer will also be giving interesting presentations on their research that they carryout on the local wildlife. The Saint Martin Billfish Tournament will be raising funds for Les Fruits de Mer during the event, in order to help them further there extremely valuable research on the wildlife of St.Martin, including a silent auction for a beautiful piece of marine art.
Save the date: June 10th to 14th, we really hope that we will see you there!
