The pink flags came down off the outriggers at Bahia Saturday night.
Pirate’s Cove wrapped Friday in Manteo. And Sunday the MidAtlantic starts — out of two ports at the same time, one of them Sunset Marina, right here in West Ocean City.
Here is the week.
Poor Girls Open: 184 boats, and a tournament that started with one woman’s diagnosis
Capt. Steve Harman’s Poor Girls Open fished Thursday through Saturday out of Bahia Marina on 22nd Street. One hundred eighty-four boats ran it this year.
Most people know the origin story halfway. Capt. Steve founded it in 1994 so the resort staff in this town — bartenders, servers, hotel workers — could afford a tournament of their own. That is the part everybody repeats, and it is true.
Here is the other half. He founded it with his wife, Pam. She was fighting breast cancer.
That is why the money goes where it goes, and it has never gone anywhere else. Over $2 million donated to the American Cancer Society to date. Steve and Pam are both gone now. Their family still runs the tournament — Shawn Harman and Earl Connelly direct it, and the Harmans and the Bahia crew put it together every August.
It is not a small-money event any more
The name says Poor Girls. The board does not.
The 22nd Annual went to the crew of the Reel Joy with Capt. Andy Helms — eight white marlin releases and a spearfish on the Friday, nine total, and it held. Janelle and Shayna were still standing at the scales when it closed at 7:30 and worked out they had won.
Over $89,000 for first place.
In a recent year the tournament paid $243,265 across all categories. Entry is $450 a boat. Calcuttas run $100 to $1,000, with four billfish release categories and one of them winner-take-all.
Last year Captain Willie Zimmerman and the crew of RoShamBo took the billfish release division with ten white marlin releases in a single day — and the earliest time on the board broke the tie.
Ten whites in one day. By a boat full of women who, in a lot of cases, are waiting tables the rest of the summer.
The growth curve tells the story better than anything
2014: 96 boats, 436 lady anglers. 28th Annual: 161 boats, 797 anglers, $243,265 paid out. 30th Annual: 800 anglers.This year: 184 boats.
A tournament built so waitresses could afford to fish is now one of the largest ladies-only billfish events in the country, and the American Cancer Society is two million dollars better for it.
Final 2026 category winners were still being certified as we published. We will update this piece with the full board.
Pirate’s Cove: 43 years, and that water still owes nobody anything
The 43rd Annual Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament finished Friday out of Manteo on the Outer Banks, after a week that opened with the 37th Alice Kelly Memorial Ladies Only Billfish Tournament on the 8th and 9th.
Boats fish three of four days out of Oregon Inlet, each team picking a lay day — and on that off day they can still enter the Lay Day Tournament if they want it.
More than six figures goes across Overall Top Boat, an Overall Jackpot, a Blue Marlin category and heaviest meat fish. The purse recently topped $1.26 million.
Last year Team Deep Color, Capt. Trey Goodson, won with 2,012.4 points behind an 806.2-pound blue. And the tournament record still stands from 2008 — Trey Irvine’s 1,228.5-pound blue aboard the Mimi, the largest blue marlin caught in U.S. Atlantic waters at the time and 86.5 pounds past the North Carolina state record. Pirate’s Cove named the dockside tiki hut after that boat, and it is still there.
Live scoring is at pcbt.catchstat.com. Final standings were not posted when we went up.
The MidAtlantic starts Sunday, and half of it is here
This is the one to pay attention to.
The 35th Annual MidAtlantic runs August 16 through 21, and it does something no other tournament on this coast does. It fishes out of two ports at the same time — Canyon Club Resort Marina in Cape May, New Jersey and Sunset Marina in West Ocean City — with full weigh-ins running at both.
Teams pick three of five fishing days and may leave from any inlet between New Jersey and Virginia. That is an enormous amount of water and an enormous amount of freedom, and it means a captain can chase a bite two states away and still weigh at home.
In 2025 it drew 198 boats and a $5.75 million purse. It has paid better than $1.4 million on a single white marlin.
Which means the same docks that emptied out after the White Marlin Open two weeks ago fill straight back up this weekend.
The question nobody has answered yet
The White Marlin Open put 334 boats on the water over six days and produced exactly two qualifying white marlin.
Not because the fish were not there. 723 whites were released in the first four days alone. They just were not the right size — a qualifying fish has to hit 70 inches and 70 pounds, and almost none of them do.
If that changes for the MidAtlantic, somebody weighs a fish worth more than a million dollars in the next seven days.
If it does not, we get another week of release flags and heartbreak, which is its own kind of story.
Either way, it happens at Sunset starting Sunday, and we will be standing there.
See you on the water.