A crowd gathered around the wharf on Garrison Cove at 10 a.m. on July 22 to see a 94-inch, 386.5-pound tuna being hoisted and weighed.
The tuna was the first to be caught in this year’s Bailey Island Fishing Tournament, which returned after a five-year hiatus.
The crew of the Portland-based Katelyn A had begun their day at 2:30 a.m. and were on the heels of a failed 30-minute battle with another fish. After setting back up, they got a bite, fighting the tuna for 45 minutes before hauling it in to be weighed.
Crew member Peter Moore has taken part in the tournament in the past and emphasized its importance to the community.
“You can see the excitement down here just from one fish on the first morning. It’s great to see all the people coming down,” Moore said. “It’s cool to have the first fish back after five years away.”
The tournament, run by the Casco Bay Tuna Club, last occurred in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic and the departure of club President Peter Curtis, who had led the tournament for more than 15 years, interrupted the event.
Bill Tranter, who recently became club president, was part of a group strongly advocating for the tournament’s return. The club began planning last fall and brought back the summer staple for its 82nd edition.
Tranter said the tournament stands apart from similar events because of its low fees and low payouts.
“It’s more about having a community event than about winning lots of money,” Tranter said. “If you talk to people who remember this tournament growing up from, say, the 1960s, everybody just remembers the good time about it, seeing the big fish and having a good time. Nobody talks about how much money there was.”
This year, 34 tuna boats signed up for the tournament. There were 42 participants in the kids division and at least 25 in the sport category. The participants ranged from locals to vacationers to residents of neighboring towns.
This year’s tournament began at 7 a.m. on Sunday, July 21, and concluded at 2 p.m. on Friday, July 25. The event wrapped up with an awards banquet outside of Cook’s on Friday night, complete with a food truck, raffle and live music.
The crew of the Bogsea took home the event’s biggest trophy for a 113-inch, 680-pound tuna.
Max Bogdanovich, who caught the fish with Dylan Myers, said their trip on Wednesday didn’t seem promising. He even texted friends, “It’s not looking good out here at all,” before a 45-minute fight with the prize-winning tuna.
In the kids division, Gregory Wallace decorated his trophy case with the first-place and third-place prizes in the pollock category. Wallace was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of his grandfather and great-grandfather standing next to a 1,009-pound tuna. He said he wants to compete in the tuna division one day.
In the sport division, Kurt Christensen, Tranter, and Herman Coombs won trophies for pollock, haddock, and mackerel, respectively.
The tournament, one of the oldest in the United States, began in 1939 to “promote sport fishing and to make the nation aware of what Casco Bay has to offer,” according to a pamphlet.
Curtis, the former organizer, was honored at the tournament. He moved around a lot when he was younger, but “the center of the universe” was Bailey Island, he said. Growing up, he sterned for Jesse Johnson, one of the tournament’s founders.
Around 20 years ago, Curtis took over the tournament, citing its importance to the island’s heritage.
“This means something to the locals,” Curtis said. “This isn’t just a summer home or a place to hang your hat. It’s a community down here. It’s an incredible community.”
Looking forward, Tranter hopes to make the Casco Bay Tuna Club function as a sports club again, with membership and more tournaments through the year.
Monique Coombs, vice president of the club, said the turnout of volunteers for the tournament demonstrates how much the community wanted it back.
“The other board members agree that this was a really awesome start and we hope to keep getting bigger and better,” she said.
