The ladies went out of the Ocean City Inlet this morning.
Capt. Steve Harman’s Poor Girls Open is fishing day one right now, Pirate’s Cove wraps tomorrow in Manteo, and the MidAtlantic starts Sunday out of two ports at once — one of them Sunset Marina, right here.
Here is where everything stands.
TODAY — Poor Girls Open, Ocean City
Ladies only. Billfish release. Bahia Marina on 22nd Street.
The boats went out at eight and the scales open at four. Fishing runs today through Saturday, and every lady angler fishes one of the three days — so what comes across the scale tonight is one third of the fleet, and the other two thirds are still holding their card.
The tournament has grown past 250 boats and close to 1,000 anglers. The kick-off party was in the Bahia parking lot last night with Fish Tales catering it, the Captain’s Meeting under the tent at 7:30, the Battle for the Bras and a 50/50 that regularly pays out in the thousands.
And the number that matters: more than $2 million donated to the American Cancer Society.
That is the correction worth making. We reported $1.8 million earlier this week off an older source. Bahia Marina’s own current figure is over two million.
Capt. Steve Harman started this thing so local waitresses and bartenders could afford a tournament of their own. Two million dollars later, it is one of the biggest ladies-only billfish events in the country and the one week in Ocean City where nobody is talking about the purse.
Entry is $450 a boat. Billfish releases pay first, second and third, with added levels for heaviest tuna, dolphin and wahoo, plus junior angler. Calcuttas run from $100 to $1,000.
Weigh-ins start at 4:00 PM at Bahia and run to nine. With that many anglers coming off the water, it is a party, not a hush. Pink flags fly off the outriggers all week.
Ticket raffle runs through Saturday with winners announced at 8:00 PM, and a one-off pink breast cancer awareness bike is on the board. The awards luncheon is at Seacrets on Sunday.
If you are anywhere near 22nd Street this afternoon, go stand at that dock.
TOMORROW — Pirate’s Cove wraps, Manteo, North Carolina
The 43rd Annual Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament finishes Friday. The week opened with the 37th Alice Kelly Memorial Ladies Only Billfish Tournament on the 8th and 9th, and the main event has been fishing since Monday.
These boats run out of Oregon Inlet onto Gulf Stream grounds that produce some of the heaviest blue marlin weighed anywhere on the East Coast. Last year Team Deep Color, Capt. Trey Goodson, took it with 2,012.4 points behind an 806.2-pound blue.
For scale on what that water can do: the tournament record still stands from 2008, when Trey Irvine weighed a 1,228.5-pound blue aboard the Mimi — at the time the largest blue marlin caught in U.S. Atlantic waters, and 86.5 pounds over the standing North Carolina state record. Pirate’s Cove named its dockside tiki hut after that boat.
Live scoring is running at pcbt.catchstat.com if you want to watch the last day.
SUNDAY — The MidAtlantic, and it is on our dock
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 simultaneously — Canyon Club Resort Marina in Cape May, New Jersey and Sunset Marina in Ocean City, with full weigh-ins at both.
Teams pick three of five fishing days and may leave from any inlet between New Jersey and Virginia.
In 2025 it drew 198 boats and a $5.75 million purse, and 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 ten days ago fill right back up this weekend.
What we are watching
Whether the white marlin bite that never quite showed up for the WMO turns on for the MidAtlantic. Three hundred thirty-four boats fished six days two weeks ago and produced exactly two qualifying whites. The fish were there — 723 were released in the first four days — they just were not the right size.
If that changes next week, somebody is going to have a very good Thursday.
Scales at Bahia today. Pirate’s Cove tomorrow. Sunset on Sunday.
See you on the water.