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here are scores of experienced watermen who have
spent decades fishing the waters off of Wrightsville
Beach without accomplishing the feat.
“There are lots of guys who have caught a
blue marlin, a white marlin and a sailfish,” says
Tripp Brice, dockmaster at the Bridge Tender Marina.
“But to catch all three in one day, here in Wrightsville Beach,
that’s an accomplishment.”
By the numbers, it’s even less common than a hole-in-one in golf
or a grand slam in baseball.
“Any given weekend in
Wilmington there’s going to be
a couple of holes-in-one,” says
Rob Tennille, who grew up on
Pelican Drive and has been fishing
in and around Wrightsville Beach
for most of his life.
The anglers agree: You don’t set
out in the morning going after a
grand slam. Some days the fish are
biting, and some days they aren’t,
but hooking all three species in a
single trip is simply not something
that’s usually on the radar.
“If you take somebody out
fishing from Wrightsville and
catch a billfish of any species,
that’s a successful trip,” Brice says.
“There’s days where the whites
might be biting, and you catch a
bunch. But to catch all three,
that’s something.”
Tennille says he’s come close.He
was fishing with Dr. Ben Smith III
and Walter Smith on the Tooth Doctor,
and by noon they had caught a blue marlin and a sailfish. At that
point, the excitement began to grow.
“We were amped,” he says. “That day, we just wanted … a fun
day. It was the Fourth of July and everybody else was partying, but
we went fishing. After those first two, it was within reach. It could
make history, to do that out of Wrightsville Beach for the first time
in years. It wouldn’t have won us anything, but we’d have been so
happy.”
Nearby, another boat reported hooking or seeing a white marlin,
so the possibility was out there.
“We wanted it,” Tennille says. “But we had to come back; we
didn’t get it.”
In the 1970s, Brice says, Wade Bailey and his crew pulled off a
grand slam on the Dottie C, a 25-foot Bertram.
“That was a two-day deal,” he says. “It was the same trip, but
it was an overnight. Back then it would take five hours to get out
to the Gulf Stream. You might come back inshore a little bit and
bottom fish, and then run back out in the morning. They caught
the sail and the white the first day, and stayed the night. Then they
caught the blue marlin.”
Since then, the boats have gotten bigger and faster, the baits
and tackle have improved and the
navigational aids are light years
more advanced.
“Back then the average boat was
probably 25 to 35 feet, going out there
billfishing,” Brice says. “Now I’d say
they’re averaging 50 feet. There are
some guys that do it with big center
consoles, but the boats and engines
are more reliable and faster. The main
thing that’s changed is the speed of the
boats; they can get out there in two
hours now.”
“You can pull up in real time — sea
surface temperature, plankton blooms,
currents spinning off the Gulf Stream,”
Brice adds. “You have all that infor-mation
you can use, and correlate it
together to figure out where the fish
are. It’s still a big ocean, but you can
take a higher percentage shot.”
“We used to just run a compass
course,” Tennille says. “If you were
within three miles of where you
wanted to be, you were lucky.”
Despite those advances, the grand slam of billfishing has not
become any more common in Wrightsville Beach. Since the
Dottie C, the keepers of Wrightsville Beach billfishing history
could only recall one other grand slam, which occurred during the
Cape Fear Blue Marlin Tournament, recorded on July 10, 2005.
“That was on the Tuna Trappe, and Brian Smith was the
captain at the time,” says then first mate Adam Thompson. “On
the second day of the tournament, we ended up catching all three.
It’s something that’s maybe in the back of everybody’s mind, but
it was definitely a big surprise. Nobody mentioned it because we
didn’t want to hex ourselves.”
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
t
“Th ere are lots of guys
who have caught a
blue marlin, a white
marlin and a sailfi sh,
but to catch all three in
one day, here in
Wrightsville Beach, that’s
an accomplishment.” — Tripp Brice, dockmaster at the Bridge Tender Marina