BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

• In the words of American Congregationalist Henry Ward Beecher, “Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.” This could very easily apply to what happened to the crew of Boat No. 249, the 73-foot Bayliss Shark Byte, in the MidAtlantic tournament on August 18, 2020. They say karma’s a bitch, but as it turns out, irony is too.

The highs and lows of big-game tournament fishing are all too common. Lost fish from broken lines, pulled hooks, or angler and crew mistakes can are seasoned and fish the US East Coast to the Dominican Republic each year. So, what caused the disqualification is a clause in the IGFA’s International Angling Rules that the MidAtlantic tournament—and many other tournaments—use as a guide for the event. To fully understand what happened, we should start at the beginning.