The White Marlin Open is a great tournament that has seen great success.  The intent of this petition is to make it even better, and in turn, make more participants feel better about its processes and rules.  Over the past few years, as all the participants surely know, there has been a lot of rumblings and dock talk about certain attributes of the tournament that the large majority of entrants would like to see changed.  After interacting with as many entrants as possible, a few of us got together to start this petition in hopes to change things for the better.  After all, the goal of any tournament should be to make ALL participants happy about participating and satisfied with the outcome, win, lose or draw.

The following is a list of common issues for a majority of participants.  We offer a suggested solution to each, but encourage comments to introduce more ideas.

1.  Like most Billfish tournaments, this should be trolling only.  No chunking, jigging, live-baiting of any kind should be allowed for any species.  Boats should be in constant motion prior to hookups.
 

2.  All fish should be weighed in the same manner – meaning that both tuna and marlin should be weighed to the nearest 10th of a pound.  As it stands now, tuna are, but marlin are not.  In addition, all fish should hang on the scale for exactly the same amount of time before weight is called.  This will prevent a situation where one team’s fish hangs on the scale longer than another team’s.

3.  Blue Marlin Minimum length is too high at 114" and should be reduced to ensure the board is filled out.  In recent years the tournament has struggled to see even one qualifying fish.  This will also ensure that Level F Calcutta is not another phantom tuna bet as if no qualifying blues are caught, that money goes to the winning tuna.
 

4.  The current calcutta structure is too complicated with too many winner take all bets and as a result, too large of a difference between 1st and 2nd/3rd place – there should be one winner take all bet for each category.

There are 2 White Marlin Winner take all calcuttas at $5K and $10K. This makes the gap between 1st place white marlin and 2nd or 3rd place white marlin millions of dollars which isn’t really representative of the difficult task of catching a qualifying white marlin. There is no reason that 2nd place should win only 5% of what 1st place wins.  Perhaps the WMO can make level E $5K, a split bet paying to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd - 55%, 30%, 15%.

There are 2 Tuna winner take all calcuttas and a 3rd “phantom” tuna winner take all in level F if no qualifying blue marlin is caught.  There is no reason 1st place should win 10X what 2nd place wins.  It also makes the winning tuna pay out more than the winning Blue Marlin and that doesn’t make sense as this is a billfish tournament.  Perhaps the WMO can make T4 a split bet paying to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd - 55%, 30%, 15%.

The intent of these changes is to make more participants feel better about the tournament and also to “spread the money around” to more winners.  It is not good when there are 382 crews in the tournament and 379 of them walk away unhappy at the tournaments conclusion.  Once we feel we have enough signatures we will deliver this petition to Jim Motsko, the tournament president for his consideration.

Thank you for listening.