Fishing the 2015 International Cap Cana Billfish Shootout in the Dominican Republic, Australian captain Tim Richardson and mate Garrett Penley steered a team of 4 novice anglers from Detroit (who had never caught a marlin before), to win the Dewars Division of the IGFA rule tournament.

The tournament is 4 days of fishing with 4 angler teams overseen by an IGFA observer on board each boat.  And it is quite a prestigious event with some of the best east coast and Caribbean crews in attendance. For this year’s event, the 20 boat fleet accounted for 125 billfish releases (101 white marlin, 22 blue marlin and 2 sails).

On board Tradition (Prime Time) taking into account the novice anglers the team switched to a spread of 3 small lures and a flat line ballyhoo (garfish) to take out the daily on Day 1 (most teams run entirely dead bait spreads), and stayed in the hunt for the next 2 days. On the final day they didn’t miss a beat to claim first place in the Dewars division with 5 white marlin on the last day. Along the way they also picked up the division’s awards for tagging the most fish, top crew and top captain.

For another perspective on the event, I enjoyed Charlie Levine (who also spent some time on board with Tim during the event)’s recap on Fishtrack here. And a second pictorial report and photos by Richard Gibson is here.

For those wondering the difference in the two division (for those of us Aussies – we do it different over here!) as far as I can tell it’s the participation in the calcutta or not.  Anyone care to elaborate on that?

DEWARS DIVISION STANDINGS (top 3):
1    TRADITION / PRIME TIME    2650
2    UNO MAS    2510
3    SHARK BYTE    2210

The Alina (owned and operated by Eric Mansur of Aruba) won the Barcelo Rum Division of the Shootout and also scored the most points overall.