Outdoors: holland Point angler has hands full with doubleheader of tilefish | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

OCEAN CITY - This past Monday, the serious fishing got underway in the 35th annual White Marlin Open, billed as the world’s largest billfish tournament. Registrations are down a tad this year, as fuel prices take their toll on long runs to distant canyons, but the show must and will go on. After all this popular contest paid out more than $3 million last year and the biggest white marlin can easily be worth more than a million greenbacks alone.

This year’s edition has gone a bit green; ordinarily the fleet blasts off at 5 a.m. at full tilt for the long run to the fishing grounds, but tournament director Jim Motsko has decided to leave as little carbon footprints a possible while saving skippers big bucks in fuel costs. He advanced the departure time by an hour and a half from the usual 5 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. to allow boats to head to the canyons at a more fuel efficient speed that can save hundreds of dollars at the pump.

Billfish catching off here hasn’t been much thus far; not enough boats trying because of the cost, but things should improve dramatically as more than a couple hundred boats join the hunt for that million dollar baby, the biggest white marlin. The more boats, the better the chances to determine where the best billfishing is available. Through Friday, contestants are allowed to fish three days of their choice. The big payoff comes Saturday.

A Holland Point angler who lives near Herrington Harbor won’t be among those chasing the pot of gold though he has a boat here. Jack Power isn’t much interested in big money competition. Moreover, he has already made his big catch of the season - one that even a billfish chaser must admire. There was no topwater fight, this scrap commenced about 850 feet below the surface. Not once did the fish tail walk.

We’re all familiar with the old chatter bring an umbrella and it won’t rain, don’t and it will. Well that’s what happened when Jack made his first trip offshore for tilefish. Of the four rods being fished on Capt. Ron Callis’ Sea Wolf all were electric but one. So you can guess which one hooked a doubleheader of big tilefish on the floor of the Atlantic. You’re right. And it was Jack’s rod with 96 pounds of stubborn fish more than 800 feet down at Davy Jones’ locker.

"That’s a long way down with all that fish on," says Jack who added the affair was being videotaped for the "Hooked on OC" show. He couldn’t just walk away as I’ve seen an occasional offshore angler do when a giant tuna or billfish sounded and they couldn’t budge it. This was a fight for the camera. For posterity.

It took 40 minutes of brute cranking strength, sweat and luck to bring the doubleheader aboard, two of eight caught that day, but Jack said it was worth it. It was excellent eating and of fine texture and flavor - something akin to lobster and not unlike fresh codfish, which anyone knows is about the sweetest and tastiest fish when fresh to be put on a table.

Jack admits the tilefish is not a strong fighter, but when one has close to a hundred pounds of these yellowish fish on the hook hundreds of feet down in the brine it takes a lot of cranking to get the job done. That’s why many fishermen use electric reels though that can backfire. Jack called Thursday to inform me a possible world record tile of 62 pounds was caught, but it won’t be seen in the record books as it was taken on a mechanical reel, which makes it ineligible.

Capt. Callis out of Sunset Marina is an appropriate tutor for one on a tilefish junket, Jack says. He holds the world record of 59 pounds, 3 ounces for a hand-cranked tilefish. Long considered a commercial catch of varying economic importance, in recent years tilefish have become increasingly popular among sportsfishermen. This fish found along the Continental Shelf from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico and can be in more than a thousand feet of water, thus electric reels are preferred by many anglers.

We don’t hear too much about them at Ocean City, but the Maryland Fishing Tournament includes them in its record listing - and more than a few fishermen bottomfish for them in June and July when the spawning run is on. The Hudson Canyon is among the more popular coastal sportsfishing grounds for the species which ranges in depths from 45 to 170 fathoms, prefers water temperatures of 43 to 53 degrees and feeds on crabs, shrimp, mollusks, marine worms and sea cucumbers and occasionally a fish.

There is no record of them entering Chesapeake Bay though they are included in the authoritative Fishes of Chesapeake Bay (1928) by Samuel F. Hildebrand and William C. Schroeder. Seems that in July of 1931, Dr. Paul Bartsch, curator of the National Museum, spotted one in a market at Cape Charles and documented it, though the fish was probably caught off the mouth of the bay. "The fish was the attraction of the entire fishing community," Dr. Bartsch reported.

The first commercial catch of tilefish was made in 1879 off Nantucket Shoals Lightship, three years later a devastating and still undetermined mortality wiped them out in 4.250 square miles of the Atlantic - and not a single one was caught for five years. They’re numbers have gradually grown and it is estimated the annual haul is now well more than 10 million pounds.

Now for a tad of background on Anne Arundel Countian Jack Powell, the tilefish catcher. Not long ago when Maryland was competing with other states to get the many hundreds of obsolete New York City subway cars and the coffers didn’t appear deep enough to get what was wanted for a drop at the Jackspot, it was Jack and his wife Scottie who came up with the big chunk of cash necessary to make the difference. Jack wrote out a check to the tune of the cost 10,000 5-dollar senior fishing licenses and 600 cars were dropped with another 600 coming to further improve the artificial reef situation thereabouts. They deserve any and all the fish they can catch.

OUTDOORS CALENDAR

Today: Maryland Boat Safety course, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels. Go to cbmm.org

Aug. 13: First session of Maryland Boating course hosted by Friends of Anne Arundel County Trails, Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church, Severna Park. Call 410-544-6244.

Aug. 14-16: Poor Girls Open Billfish Tournament out of Bahia Marine, Ocean City. Go to bahiamarina.com

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Send outdoors news to Bill Burton, PO Box 430, Pasadena, MD 21123-0430; fax to 410-360-2427, or e-mail burtonoutdoors@yahoo.com. Please include your phone number in ALL communications.