2007 Mud Marlin Derby Logo

Date: May 20. 2007 — To: PFIC Message Board — From: Ken Jones — Subject: Berkeley Pier MMD #6

I know, I know, when you have a fishing event—Derby, Get-To-Gether, Contest—whatever you call it, it’s about the fish, the biggest and the most. Right? Well, not always. Mud Marlin Derby #6 at the Berkeley Pier Saturday night was about having a good time and the people and good vibes were just as important, if not more important, than the fishing action, which in itself was also pretty darn good.

There were several harbingers giving hint that the night would be special. First off was the walk out to the end before the start of the derby. Several bat rays were already in evidence along with five keeper-size halibut (to 34”), a starry flounder, and buckets filled to the brim with jacksmelt.

Later, as the light faded and the local sky took on a crystalline motif for a couple of hours, a beautiful crescent moon shown bright but was complimented by an equally bright star in the sky—Venus—that seemed to hang like a ornament just under the moon. Only curmudgeons and those too busy being sad to be happy, failed to feel the feeling.

Date: May 20, 2007 — To: PFIC Message Boardm — From: gyozadude — Subject: MMGT 2007 Results

The Mud Marlin derby produced more rays this year than in quite a few years. This caused a shortage of judges running around measuring this year. And further down back towards the foot of the pier, some non-participants were also scoring on some rays. One ray, a monster 70+ pounder that must have been over 10 inches thick and more than 3 1/2 feet across.

The gathering was wonderful, with some old faces, like Stinkyfingers and Dolphinrider, and it wasn’t too long ago, we saw SteveO in Catalina who also showed up. The weather could be much better too. Relatively calm, and just a little chilly. A far cry from the near gale conditions reported nightly with bone-chilling fog earlier in the week.

Food was good, I think. We had chili, ribs, dumplings, yakisoba, subway sandwiches, and hot grilled halibut too (freshly caught by Redfish).

The results are in: Winners: 1st Place — Jeff Garcia – Rockfish with 2 rays (46lb + 17 lbs), 2nd Place — Dustin (guest of a rat with 2 rays – 14 + 10lbs) and West Coast Dave with one ray (24 lbs). Dustin won because in a tie for weight, the win goes to the one with more wingspan, and Dustin had two rays for more wingspan.

More details to come on the scoring. It does not appear that Serenity schooled Grammar Police – on the contrary, GP Joey caught 2 rays I think. But the details are still locked up in the back of the truck, and will stay there until morning, when I wake up and have the energy to clean up. Gyozadude — Proud UPSAC Member   “Yes — I can roll potsticker skins”

Posted by whoshooked — Thanks for organizing the MMGT James! Great food, great fun. My first MMGT and it’s so nice to put faces together with the handles. Excellent prizes for the raffle also! I’m already looking forward to next raffle, er I mean MMGT. BTW, who was the lady interviewing Ken with a microphone?

Posted by Raidersfan1 — Great turnout, great food and pretty good weather too! At least at the end of the pier with SSC’s wind block up. Thanks again to G-Dude and Ken for bringing together another MMD, lots of fun all the way around, lots of Marlins, good prizes for the raffle and putting faces to handles and fishing once again with folks who I myself have not seen in awhile. Although we may have been short on judges, most of the rays caught were near or at the end of the pier were Brian (ICA) and myself were stationed to measure, weigh and report in.

Posted by Ken Jones — GDude is the man who deserves the credit for delivering last night’s baby. He posted it, made up the rules/regs/, organized the judges/judging, helped gather and even wrapped one of the gifts, ordered the trophies, and last but not least hauled about 400 pounds of items out to the gathering before spending his time at the event cooking a wide assortment of items. Between the chili, ribs and coffee out at the end, and the sandwiches, sausages, noodles, and fresh halibut prepared by GDude, there was little reason for anyone to leave hungry. That’s not even mentioning the table of Russian goodies sitting next to GDude nor the pot stickers donated and then cooked up by James. It was a night to gain weight even if you were walking up and down the pier. When combined with some decent fishing, a beautiful night showcasing the Moon and Venus, a not-too-cold evening, and a friendly group of anglers (including several old timers we hadn’t seen in a while), it was one of those special nights.

Posted by Mr. Pole Pack — Great time as always! My son and I had a great time last night! We arrived and set up close to the registration desk. It was pretty crowded but guys who were fishing actually made room for us. Thanks! We brought squid for the rays (skunked) and smoked sausages for G-dude’s grill. Shout out to Red, SSC, GP, Bankie1, Steve W., BigRich, MinnowMagnet, FinPrints, Ken Jones, G-dude, Mel, and anyone else I met last night. The food was plentiful and delicious! My son tried halibut for the first time and loved it. My son was asking me about the event and how everyone knew about it. I told him about the site and explained that everyone had a screen name. So I told him to come up with one. Anthony is now “The Fishinator” The vibe was super-friendly and the weather was great! Can’t wait till next year. P.S. The Hornblower incident was crazy close. Was that a six-ouncer I heard bouncing off?

Redfish and Rockfish (1st Place Winner)

Posted by rockfish — Thanks again to Gyozadude for putting on a great event! The food was awesome as usual and everything was well planned and well run. Also thanks to Ken and and all the other judges who were kept busy walking up and down the pier weighing and measuring fish. My nights fishing started out slow. My son and I went without a bite for the first 4 hrs. About 10:00pm I was thinking of moving my pole to the South side of the pier and decided to check the time with my cell phone. Just then my pole bent and started stripping line, I leaped out of my chair and dropped my phone onto my camp stove when I heard a plunk. I had just dropped my phone right into the pot of water I had cooked with. I quickly plucked out my phone, tossed it to my son and began fighting a good size ray. After a great fight and climbing onto the railing to get around the light pole it was time to get her in the net. Thanks to Thnderr’s skilled net work, my first ray of the night (46lbs) was weighed, measured and lowered back into the water to fight another day. On returning to my stuff I checked my phone and found it’s time to get a new one. I have been needing a new one for a while now anyway. I landed one more ray about 11:30 that weighed in at 17lbs and then got to wrap up a great night with being awarded the first place trophy!

Rockfish and nice mud marlin (bat ray)

Posted by red fish — And BCooney too…representin’ the old “WildBunch” that could not be present in whole of Phishnpat, Elric, OCD, JTF, Messy Marv… Good job on the clean-up G as I was just wondering how folk coming next day were going to perceive the pier as I saw the mess left by some. Rockfish, you had some karma going from MMD’s past… you picked your spot…one I never fish… administered your technique… job well done. Good job at applying rockfish techniques to an area that you don’t fish often… shows adaptability like Ken was talking about…

Posted by illcatchanything — Awesome Night!! Great food, Great turnout, Awesome Weather, and lots of fish!! What more could you ask for. Lots of rays, a few sharks, and Red Fish’s delicious “by catch” halibut.I was really pleased to see the amount of kids out there having a blast. A great night of fishing and friendship.

Redfish and Dustin (friend of Raidersfan 1) who was the 2nd Place Winner

Posted by Raidersfan1 — Oh, I feel much better this morning than I did when I walked off the pier last night with ICA and SS23 at 2:30am. Being a judge and walking the pier from the registration desk to the end became a challenge, as I didn’t want to leave the windbreak that SSC had placed up. The weather at the end was great, no wind, calm water, good food and lots of fun.

The Hornblower yacht kept cutting in too close to the end of the pier and risking fouling lines

However, the adrenaline really kicked into gear when the Hornblower yachts would blow through leaving everyone to scramble to pull their lines in. Most of the action was near the end of the pier, which kept ICA and myself busy. Lots of missed opportunities by Jay, Dustin and RedFish. SSC finally caught a ray at the Derby. SS23′s gargantuan hoop net made most rays look tiny in the midst of it. When the derby was over and the winners rewarded for their efforts, it seemed that the bite at the end began to take off. Some big rays were fought and brought up on deck by Joey (Grammar Police) and Jay (Ilovefishing).

Joey (Grammer Police) and a mud marlin

No derby is complete without one photo of someone on the wall, this time it was Joey relaxing as he was helping Redfish with his ray. As much as we wanted to see Serenity school Joey, it was not meant to be last night. Was great to see everyone again and meet new board members as well as old. No other place I would want to be last night.

Posted by gyozadude — Chronology — Stats and Bat Ray List — Looks like quite a few of the coordinators got there later that we thought we would. Apologies for that. I guess there were a number of graduation ceremonies and games yesterday that clogged 101, 237, 880, and of course the average driving IQ of the Bay Area has gone to hell in a Hand Basket because of the 580-80 overpass fire and subsequent destruction of 100 yds of overpass roadway. Needless to say, after taking two hours to come in from the south bay, I was feeling a little bad about getting there late and forcing folks to all crowd around the registration table at 5:45pm and possibly starting a few minutes late.

I was happy to know that down at the end, Redfish, SSC and Grammar Police had already set up shop. Red and SSC are pretty much our de facto Berkeley Pier regulars and in prior UPSAC conference call meetings, it was good to get thumbs up on date and time from Red for the event in the prior weeks leading up to this event. Red is also the official home pier host and presenter for the trophies.

Joey (Grammer Police) and his better half

Dragging my pier cart from the parking lot near Skates wasn’t too bad. I had rehearsed the 450 lb loading up and bungee cord thing earlier in the day and I over pressurized my tires and lubed the bearings and chassis of the cart to reduce rolling resistant.

I was really glad to meet up with Raidersfan1 (Mike) and the Skipper, Ken, just minutes after getting to the 10th lamppost from the end. Ken took over the raffle sales, and Mike handled the registrations and sign-in forms. I was unloading food, and setting up to cook, plus putting together judges packages.

Total officially signed-in personnel: 75. We had 93 pre-registered, so it wasn’t so bad of a flake out factor.

Thanks to all the donors and sponsors and pier rats who bought tix for the raffle – you helped raise $442 dollars in the raffle. This amount “smoked” the Catalina raffle, which only raised $261. Unfortunately, Catalina has been smoked in more ways than one. This does not include proceeds from T-shirt sales that add from $60 – $100 per event as well.

Rods and reels were ready!

We really need to thank Oyster Pt. Bait & Tackle (two Penn Reels), Gotcha Bait & Tackle (two gift certificates for $25 each), Alan Tani (five service tickets good for free service and drag tune-up), Raidersfan1 (Berkeley Lightning rod and legwork at Oyster Pt.), Grammar Police (classic Pfleuger Sea King conventional reel tuned by Alan Tani, StripedsideChaser (hitting up Gotcha B/T), and Bankie_1 (pier railing rod holder) for their generous donations and legwork in soliciting gifts. Oh, and I can’t forget Pablo and his company Polepack.com for donating two nice polepack bags to a couple of lucky winners. I hope the folks found the raffle pretty exciting and rewarding. Lots of good stuff. And there were some cheesy filling items too. But all winners were gracious. I think MJonesJr has two more bait knives now. I’m not sure what he’ll do with them, but hey, I have like four of those in stock myself since I use those to cut weeds and roots in the garden too.

Grand prize custom rod went to Damon Knudson, one of the folks in the FishermanKing8 party. And I think Wa Mouk in West Coast Dave’s party is missing a Daiwa 3500-series spinning reel, which I still have for you. Email me (address somewhere in a clickable link in my .sig below) so I can figure how to get the prize over to you. And somebody is grinning with that beautiful Pfleuger Sea King which looked awesome.

Thanks to all of LosAmigos4′s party and their kids for helping draw the tickets in the raffle.

Folks are curious about the bat rays. We had some really big break offs on lots of the pilings but 22 rays were landed and measured. Winner is by aggregate weight of all rays caught. And in the case of a tie, the greater wingspan total wins. It was a pretty close contest and much of it decided around between 11pm – midnight.

Bat Ray Chronology — 2007 May 19 — MMGT 2007 — Berkeley, CA

Time (pm)  —  Angler — Net Wt. (lbs.)  — Wingspan (in.)

6:45 — Javier (LosAmigos 4), 6.0 lbs., 22 in. — 6:50 — Ilovefishing, 13 lbs., 25 in. — 6:55 — Surf_fisher, 6 lbs., 21.5 in. —  6:59 — Ilovefishing, 11 lbs., 22 in. —  8:25     Jesse (thnderr), 5 lbs., 20 in. — 8:28  — Jay (Ilovefishing),  20 lbs,  29 in. — 9:50 —      Rockfish, 46 lbs., 40 in. — 10:20 — Whoshooked, 4 lbs., 19 in. — 10:30 —  Red fish, 20 lbs., 29 in. — 10:42 —  Ray (Raidersfan1),  23  lbs., 33 in. — 11:00 — Grammar Police, 10 lbs., 23.5 in. — 11:05 —  Bernabe (LosAmigo4),  7 lbs.,  22 in. — 11:20 —   Stripesidechaser, 11 lbs.,  23 in. — 11:25 —  Lucio Lara Jr.(LosAmigos4), 8 lbs.,  22 in. — 11:29 —  Eugene (Raidersfan1), 10  lbs., 23 in. — 11:30  — West Coast Dave, 24 lbs., 31 in. — 11:30  — Shane (Raidersfan1), 6 lbs., 22 in. — 11:40 —  Grammar Police, 10 lbs., 23.5 in. — 11:40  — Rockfish, 17 lbs., 32 in. — 11:45  — Bankie_1, 9.5  lbs.,  23 in. — 11:45 — Surf_fisher, 8 lbs.,  22 in. — 11:50 —  Jerel (Mr. Polepack), 7.5 lbs., 23 in.

Technically, I wasn’t really skunked, but I was. Shane hooked up around 11:50 pm to a small ray, but it drifted right over to my line and also took my bait. When we started hauling the ray in, we found both hooks in the mouth, but Shane’s looked like it was hooked first and more deeply. So I gave that fish over. But I may claim at least 2 ozs. of credit to stop the skunk. Gyozadude – Proud UPSAC Member  “Yes – I can roll potsticker skins”

Posted by gyozadude — The cuisine—I already posted about SSC’s chili. But someone brought ribs too, and Bankie_1 brought sandwich fixings, someone brought coffee, someone dropped off hot dogs and buns, and someone else brought pork dumplings which I grilled (aka Potsticker-style), and I also brought yakisoba (Japanese-style chow mein), a pack of Polska Kielbasa, and I had my hot ham/turkey/roast beef sandwich fixings on multigrain bread and assortment of cold drinks.

So I’d say folks should have had enough to eat and be merry. Plus, I had a bunch of butter with me, and SSC filleted Redfish’s 30+ inch halibut caught earlier in the day and left the slabs on a foil sheet next to my grill. He even sent the kids back on scooters with garlic seasoning for the butter too.

I did fire up the grill and cook the slabs of halibut and it pretty much disappeared quickly. I gotta thank all the kids for hauling stuff back and forth – on foot or by scooter. For all the food that was dropped off, or that Bankie_1 made, I think I was down to two small packs of deli roast beef, some bread and 4 bottles of water. Hot dogs – gone! Kielbasa – gone! Potstickers – gone! yakisoba – gone! canned sodas – gone! 2/3rds of my sandwich fixes and all my butter – gone! I came in heavy. But went back was a lot lighter.

Posted by west coast dave — I had a great time. I finally got rid of the skunk. After catching 4 Bat Rays back in 2002 at the first MMD, I haven’t caught any in the following years 03,04,05,06. So catching that 24-lb Bat Ray was sweet. And winning 3rd place was sweeter. It was also nice seeing you all again. And once again, big thanks for the great cooking G-Dude. And a special thank you to Redfish for sharing his Halibut with all of us.

Red Fish and West Coast Dave (3rd Place Winner)

Posted by red fish — Nice going Dave… and the other winners… There were a lot of fine fishermen there… what I have always said, “There are a lot of folks here that can fish,” referring to PFIC. When I saw Rockfish sign up, an eyebrow went up… a true contender… he’s got a few secrets. Great to see all the old folks: to include Tom, Dave, Mike and Michael, Martin, Lisa, Steve… the people we don’t get to see as much of. Guys I have fished with from Novato including Jay and his second place buddy fishing next to me… Dustin… All the people from Antioch..SSC.. I will see you during the fall run. Mike and his nephew and all the Oyster Point fishers. way to tough out that clunk on the head Kevin… Joey, Shannon and dad representing the FosterCityCrew… thanks for the tips on the two-hook shark-trace, supporting the raffle… G-Dude. for putting this thing together once again and withstanding two hours of grueling traffic on 880 N. from the A’s game… all the people who got donations for the raffle… KJ for bringing us all together and driving way from Lodi at night to be there… There was a lot of spirit of the group…esprit de corp as Dan put it once… all our regular fishing buddies ICA Rich, Mel, Minnow, heck even James & Julie came out to represent after a night on the town … Thanks to Alan Tani for tight drags and his contributions… Jon of old PJ Crew… and those that couldn’t show up but were there in spirit like Alabama, James Peach, YN’ckz, Bodega Boyz… As Rich once said: “It’s the people that make the event.”

Posted by stripesidechaser — Thanks to all, it was great! I had a blast, hanging out with Mike, Ken, Robert, Joey, Shannon, Kevin and all the others. Actually chased the skunk away with my first MMGT ray, as well as the raffle skunk with one of the Penn 60 reels PLUS an Alan Tani ticket! I was absolutely amazed that 30 lbs of chili (yes, calculated right at 30 lbs) could possibly go in under two hours… now that was a new MMGT record!

Sidestripechase and Red’s halibut

 Posted by SturgeonSlayer2 — Had a great time at the MMD hanging all night at the end with Mike, Bob, Joey, Shannon, Lucio (+family), Red, Minnow and meeting Ken, G-dude, and a whole bunch others. Got to use my new net tonight, (no thanks to me), so thanks to everyone who brought in rays. My fishing skill just wasn’t cutting it at the MMD, but it was no matter because I had a great time just relaxing and talking with new and old people. Chili and all the rest of the grub were great, so thanks to everyone who hauled it all out. Long night at the BP, but well worth it! I just gotta get rid of Reds singing in my head, “Minnow and the rest!” ha. Thanks again everyone for making the night a great one. -SS23.

Posted by serenityonthebay — Well folks, I didn’t school GP, this time. In fact, I was totally skunked (I did win a Penn reel in the raffle though!!)… In hindsight…the slow night allowed for me to stay on top of the coffee (VITAL part of good fishing), get to meet and know a bit more about some pretty fabulous people and visit with my old-timer father who showed up with a buddy and 6 racks of smoked ribs. Thank you all for allowing me to be part of such a fantastic event! I can’t wait for next year!

The end with its wind block was crowded as usual