Insane First Day at the White Marlin Open

When I use the word “insane” to describe the first day of scales action at the 44th Annual White Marlin Open I don’t mean it in the big fish, lots of fish, awesome action kind of way. I mean it in it’s literal sense. It was a run for cover, Noah’s Ark rain, hold on to your a$$ with both hands kind of insane. “I’ve never been in a tornado” might be words that I can’t say tomorrow……because I just may have been. At around 6 PM during our live broadcast coverage of the tournament a small tornado or powerful microburst landed at Harbour Island and had us all running for our vehicles. I was under the big tee shirt tent when it happened and it honestly felt like it was going to fly away. The wind lasted for several minutes and at the end of it there was some pretty significant damage at Harbour Island. The porta potties were blown over and 10 feet from where they were set up, tent stakes for a 50′ x 50′ tent were pulled from the ground and from what I hear the small shed on the fuel dock at Harbour Island was blown off of the dock and destroyed. Thankfully there were no major injuries and we were able to get the live feed up about 2 hours later. Even then we had to deal with monsoon type rains and even some thunder and lightning. Dave Messick and Gregory Benn stuck it out in the deluge and got me some great video for the stream and Dave took this killer pic of a boat leaving the inlet this morning….which they probably regretted later.

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