Blue Marlin Grand Championship weigh-ins July 17-18 at The Wharf

Blue Marlin Grand Championship weigh-ins July 17-18 at The Wharf

Public events related to the “Greatest Show in Sportfishing,” the Blue Marlin Grand Championship, are scheduled July 16-18 at The Wharf in Orange Beach, with fan friendly weigh-ins, hosted by Jim Cox and Kelly Finley, set for 5-7 p.m. on July 17 and 5-8 p.m. on July 18. There is also an early bird weigh-in slated on July 17 from 7-8 a.m.
Weigh-ins will be held under the marlin on Main St. A giant LED screen, a concert-level sound system, the Flaming Marlin and champagne celebrations add to the ambiance (above).
Boats depart The Wharf Marina at 9:30 a.m. on July 16 and proceed through Perdido Pass.
Last year, the 66 teams and 411 anglers competed for a record $1.8 million in tournament prize money. The total catch count was 82 fish, including 49 blue marlin, five white marlin, five sailfish, four dolphin, 17 yellowfin tuna and two blue wahoos. As usual, the meat was donated to the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo.
Team Grocery Isle took first place with a 746.2-pound blue marlin, with Capt. Wilks Hammock at the helm and Donny Rouse on the rod. There was already a buzz building at The Wharf, as the big blue was reeled in on Friday evening, a day before it arrived at the scale.
Rouse and his team netted $405,977.80 in prize money and will have the honor, as is tradition, of leading the boat parade out of Perdido Pass this year.
Team Devotion won the catch & release division in 2025. Led by captain Jason Hallmark, the team, as they also did in 2021, won the Gulf Coast Triple Crown title, earning $188,950 for good measure.
The tourney debuted in 2012 at The Wharf and quickly became a must-fish event on the highly competitive Gulf of Mexico tournament circuit.
Wharf owner Art Favre’s A Work of Art team won the inaugural event with Kevin Courville in the chair for the first-place blue marlin, which weighed 665.4 pounds.
In 2023, eleven years later to the exact day, Courville and A Work of Art claimed the title again on Favre’s 92-foot Viking captained by Jason Buck. His winning 597.4-pound (121 inch) blue marlin made Courville the first two-time champion in tourney history.
The tourney, billed as the Greatest Show in Sportfishing, is part of the Triple Crown Series along with the Orange Beach Billfish Classic and the Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Classic.
Proceeds from the Blue Marlin Grand Championship benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with more than $250,000 raised to date.
“It’s a spectator event and that’s what teams love the most because they feel like rock stars when they come into the arena and get that reception from the crowd,” Cox said. “You’re so close you can feel the flames coming out of the marlin.”