A 50.1-pound blackfin tuna caught in the course of the Miami Dolphins’ annual FINS Weekend charity match in Coconut Grove, Florida, earned angler Bob Kowalski a $30,000 prize and a shot at an Worldwide Sport and Fish Affiliation all-tackle world report.
Kowalski was fishing with longtime tourney participant Pete Sinnick and household aboard the Miss Britt Specific on June 1 when he hooked the tuna. Sinnick, a diehard Dolphins fan who says he’s entered 21 of the 25 Fins tournaments, was preventing a 100-pound sailfish when Kowalski attached. “I simply wished to get out of the best way so he might land the meat fish,” Sinnick stated throughout a videotaped interview with match organizers.
“He had a sailfish, I had the blackfin tuna, and she or he [Sinnick’s wife] had a mahi-mahi on all on the identical time,” Kowalski added. “So it was fairly a coordinated dance at the back of the boat.”
Blackfins are among the many smallest tuna species however are extremely prized by leisure anglers for his or her combat and their excellence as desk fare. They feed on a bigger vary of prey than most tuna, together with deep-sea fish, flying fish, shrimp, crab, and squid. Blackfins are discovered all through the western Atlantic, concentrated principally from North Carolina to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, together with the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, with scattered information as far north as Martha’s Winery, Massachusetts.
Kowalski’s catch landed his workforce in first place within the Heaviest Fish General Division together with first place within the Heaviest Tuna Division, incomes a $30,000 payout along with the shot on the world report.
The IGFA all-tackle mark for the species is a 49-pound, 6-ounce blackfin caught on April 6, 2006, by Capt. Matthew Pullen in Marathon Florida. If paperwork is submitted for Kowalski’s catch, it ought to surpass that report. It will even be the second new blackfin mark for the IGFA within the final yr: In April 2023, Cheyenne Joseph set a brand new girls’s report for the species, boating a 40-pound blackfin that retired a 41-year report.
FINS Weekend, run by Bluewater Actions, brings collectively Dolphins gamers, coaches, alumni, cheerleaders, and followers to lift funds for the Baptist Well being Orthopedic Institute Youth Athletic Outreach Program, which helps youth and highschool athletics throughout South Florida. By means of this system, athletic trainers are deployed to youth and highschool soccer video games, guaranteeing the security and well-being of younger athletes. The fundraiser was began in 1997 by former Dolphins head coach and NFL hall-of-famer Jimmy Johnson, who was available to witness the weigh-in of the potential world report—a primary within the match’s historical past.
