The White Marlin Open scales closed Saturday night and Ocean City exhaled for about four days.
That is over. Two tournaments are on the water right now or about to be, one in each state, and one of them has nothing to do with the money at all.
Pirate’s Cove, Manteo, North Carolina
The 43rd Annual Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament is running August 8 through 14 out of Pirate’s Cove Marina in Manteo, on the Outer Banks. The week opened with the 37th Annual Alice Kelly Memorial Ladies Only Billfish Tournament on the 8th and 9th, and the main event has been fishing since the 10th. It wraps Friday.
If you have never followed this one, understand what the boats have access to. Out of Oregon Inlet they are on the same Gulf Stream grounds that produce some of the heaviest blue marlin weighed anywhere on the East Coast. This is not a white marlin tournament that happens to catch blues. This is blue marlin country.
Last year Team Deep Color, led by Captain Trey Goodson, took it with 2,012.4 points behind an 806.2-pound blue marlin brought to the docks.
Eight hundred and six pounds. For scale, the fish that won the White Marlin Open last week weighed eighty.
More than six figures in cash goes to the top finishers across Overall Top Boat, an Overall Jackpot, a Blue Marlin category and heaviest meat fish. Every day ends on the waterfront in Manteo, which is a different kind of evening than Harbour Island but no quieter.
Live scoring runs at pcbt.catchstat.com if you want to follow the last two days.
Poor Girls Open, Ocean City, Thursday
Back home, the 32nd Annual Capt. Steve Harman’s Poor Girls Open runs August 13 through 15 out of Bahia Marina on 22nd Street.
Ladies only. Billfish release. And it is the one week of the Ocean City season where the number that matters is not the purse.
$1.8 million donated to the American Cancer Society.
Here is how it started, and it is worth knowing. Capt. Steve Harman set it up as a way for local waitresses and bartenders to have an affordable, fun competition while raising money for breast cancer research. Not a millionaires’ tournament. The women who work the restaurants and bars in this town, getting a boat and a shot at a billfish.
It has grown to more than 200 boats and better than 900 lady anglers, with added entry levels for tuna and dolphin alongside the billfish release.
The format is three days, fish one. Weigh-ins start at 4:00 PM at Bahia Marina, and with that many anglers coming off the water at once, the weigh-in is a party rather than a hush. There is a 50/50 raffle, a ticket raffle running all week, vendors and artisans through the lot, and a resident artist painting the event canvas to be auctioned at the banquet.
Pink fishing flags fly off the outriggers all week. If you are in Ocean City Thursday through Saturday, go stand at Bahia and watch them come in.
Two tournaments, two different points
One is 806-pound blue marlin and six figures on the line in Manteo.
The other is 900 women out of Ocean City who have handed the American Cancer Society $1.8 million, one August at a time, because a captain thought the waitresses deserved a tournament too.
Both are what this coast does in August.
Still ahead
The MidAtlantic runs August 16 through 21 out of two ports at once – Canyon Club Resort Marina in Cape May and Sunset Marina right here in Ocean City, full weigh-ins at both. Thirty-fifth year. In 2025 it drew 198 boats and a $5.75 million purse.
The docks do not get a rest until September.
See you on the water.