Boats & Billfish

In this episode, Capt. Darrin Isaacs talks to Capt. Marty Bates about his recent victory in the 2020 World Cup. The World Cup is a worldwide, winner-take-all shootout held annually on July 4th. Co-founded, back in the day, by Dallas Cowboys GM (1959 - 1989) Tex Schramm and Norman Wood, a Key West businessman. Teams fish their own time zone with lines in at 8:30am , lines out at 4:30pm. This is a a blue marlin tournament. Fish must be over 500lbs to qualify. Common areas that produce winning fish are Kona, Hawaii; Maderia; Bermuda; Gulf of Mexico and Cape Verde. Capt. Marty Bates won the 2020 on the “La Onda Mila” fishing in the Cape Verde Islands.

In this episode, Capt. Darrin Isaacs talks to Capt. James Parker to discuss Furuno's game changing Omni Sonar.

In this episode, I talk to Grant Haugen with Seakeeper and discuss the origin story about how two visionaries, Shep McKenney and John Adams developed a gyro stabilization product that eliminates over 90% of boat roll. I also speak with John Wurtz with USA Yacht Stabilizers which specializes in installing and retrofitting Seakeepers.  

In this podcast I catch up with Captain Chris Sanchez about fishing tournaments in Cuba. Chris was on the Barefoot, a 64’ Viking, fishing the 66th Annual Hemingway Tournament and the Gamefish Grande Championship. The Gamefish Grande is a new 2 tournament series run by the folks that produce the BBC (Bahamas Billfish Championship). I have not yet taken a boat to Cuba, so we spend some time talking about the marinas and Cuba in general. If you want to go straight to the fishing, skip to 14:47 and 37:32.

As defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a FAD or fish aggregating device is a permanent, semi-permanent or temporary structure or device made from any material and used to lure fish. Well, apparently there are more than a few extremely well done and shockingly productive FADs 140 miles off the west coast of Costa Rica. The “Blue Eagle” a 61’ Viking captained by James Parker recently returned from 2 days of fishing these mysterious Costa Rican FADs with his owners, Brad Jones and Stewart Jones. How’s this for a box score: raised 72 blue marlin, got bites out of 61 and caught 21. I mean DAMN son, that’s what you call getting your game on. I caught up with Captain James Parker (check out the full podcast) and got the scoop.   B&B - You recently returned from fishing the FADs off the coast of Costa Rica. Tell me about it cap.   JP - Best fishing I've seen. It was pretty wild, lots of double headers, triples, quads coming up. There were blue marlin everywhere. There would be