{"id":341979,"date":"2021-04-12T06:04:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T20:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=341979"},"modified":"2021-04-12T06:04:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T20:04:51","slug":"10-7-reels-in-mightiest-mahi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/10-7-reels-in-mightiest-mahi\/","title":{"rendered":"10\/7 reels in mightiest mahi"},"content":{"rendered":"
Captain Alvin Iglecias and his crew of five aboard the boat Trophy are awarded their $2,000 cash prize for winning the 17th Annual Mahi Mahi Fishing Derby at the weighing station of Smiling Cove Marina last Saturday. (Mark Rabago)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Captain Alvin Iglecias and his crew of five aboard the boat Trophy reeled in the mightiest mahi Saturday to rule the 17th Annual Mahi Mahi Fishing Derby.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old skipper and 10\/7 team made up of Ivan Ilmov, Keith Torres, Brandon Echalico, John Jimeno, and Phil Babauta topped 58 other boaters to win the COVID-19 edition of the yearly fishing tournament for the coryphaena hippurus or dolphin fish.<\/p>\n

Iglecias and his crew caught the day\u2019s bounty of the sea\u2014an 18.9-lb whopper. The retired Customs employee said they were just lucky they caught the mightiest mahi of the derby.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got bigger ones before\u2026normally mahi they stay out late every year. For February and March it\u2019s hard to catch especially April. By July it\u2019s like 1lb or 2 lbs and that\u2019s the biggest catch. I tried fishing for it in July during the [The Saipan International Fishing Tournament] and I caught 2 lbs and it was already good enough for second place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Iglecias said they got their prize about five hours after setting sail from the Smiling Cove Marina and caught it east of Saipan, more specifically between Saipan and Tinian.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year that\u2019s my favorite spot for the derby,\u201d said the resident of Dandan.<\/p>\n

Iglecias\u2019 first mate, Ilmov, said them winning the 2017 mahi derby wasn\u2019t just about pure luck as he and the rest of the crew of Trophy leaned heavily on the experience of their captain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been with captain Alvin for two years. He has already many years of experience and he really knows the waters around Saipan and also understands the weather and lures\u2026it\u2019s his experience and a little bit of luck that allowed us to win this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Iglecias and company edged CAT-SIKA of captain Jesse Sablan who landed an 18.2-lb mahi, while rounding out the Top 3 was Kingfisher 2 of captain Jun Azarcon with their 17.9-lb catch.<\/p>\n

Sablan\u2019s crew aboard Reel Tight was made up of Gonzalo Pangelinan, Christopher Pangelinan, George Davi, and Nathan David.<\/p>\n

Kingfisher 2 crewmembers aboard the ship with the same name included Elmer Ocampo and Manuel Mogan.<\/p>\n

For a hard day\u2019s work in the water, 10\/17 took home the top prize of $2,000, while CAT-SIKA got $1,500 and Kingfisher 2 $1,000.<\/p>\n

Masaki Kitami\u2019s Salty Bandits (16.5 lbs) and John Sablan\u2019s MV Gloria 2 (14.4 lbs) received consolation prizes for finishing fourth and fifth places, respectively.<\/p>\n

The main sponsor of the year\u2019s 17th Annual Mahi Mahi Fishing Derby is Budweiser and the sporting event was organized by the Saipan Fishermen\u2019s Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Captain Alvin Iglecias and his crew of five aboard the boat Trophy reeled in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":341981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}