Captain, owner of Sensation not going down without fight against Big Rock ruling

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (WNCT) — Two members of the Sensation boat that had its blue marlin catch in the 65th annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament disqualified say their fight against the ruling has not ended.

Sensation owner Ashley Bleau said on Monday he’s filed a protest after the decision was made that his fish was disqualified after it had a shark bite on it. Despite a more than six-hour fight that resulted in the blue marlin boated and the crew returning to have it weighed late Saturday — unofficially the catch weighed at 619.4 pounds — the Big Rock Blue Marlin committee ruled early Sunday the fish had been disqualified.

Bleau said he’s acquired the services of a lawyer who will begin a legal process to reverse the decision.

“We’re at the Big Rock Landing finding out that, they jump on board, start poking around and they’re like, ‘Oh well this seems to be an issue’,” Bleau said. “They said, ‘It looked like a shark bite.’ I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, nobody on that boat ever saw a shark.”

Bleau said he, Capt. Greg McCoy and the others were upset about the ruling.

“The problem we have is we’ve got an interpretation of a rule that necessarily isn’t as clear as everybody seems to think,” Bleau said. “There’s three dots behind Big Rock’s announcement that leaves a lot of language behind it that wasn’t disclosed.”

“That rule is not something that is beneficial to anybody, to the tournament, to the participants, and most definitely not to our fans,” Bleau said. “That community down there in Carteret County means the world to Sensation, and I want everybody to know that I cannot express how much it meant for me to see them show up in the thousands to cheer us on.”

Saturday was a day of highs and lows for the Morehead City-based team, McCoy said.

“We saw the fish. We knew right away that if we were lucky enough to get it to the boat that we’d won the Big Rock,” McCoy said.

After the long fight with the fish, the celebration began that continued through the three-hour trip back to Big Rock Landing. The Sensation thought they were not far away from a $3.5 million payout — the $2,769,438 million top prize and the Fabulous Fisherman prize of $739,500 for the first fish caught weighing over 500 pounds.

“It was pretty cool until we hung the fish up and then things started to go sour,” McCoy said.

Despite all that happened during the weigh-in, McCoy and his crew had to wait until Sunday morning to hear the news they didn’t want to hear about the fish being disqualified. International Game Fishing Association rules state a fish bitten by a shark is mutilated.

This is where the Sensation crew is ready to fight back.

“The Big Rock is not an IGFA tournament anyways,” McCoy said. “They have several rules that don’t coincide with IGFA rules.”

McCoy said the ruling has left more questions than answers. Additionally, the wording of mutilated has become the point of focus for both the Sensation crew and also fans that have rushed to defend the crew. They are pointing to the 2019 winner, Top Dog. Its fish came in at 914 pounds but had marks on it and was sitting outside the boat when it was docked in large part because it was too heavy to get into the boat.

“Then we have the example of the Top Dog in 2019,” McCoy said. “That fish was totally mutilated, halfway destroyed, had bites in it, as well as they couldn’t get it on the boat so it was hanging out and they got exhaust damage to it. So why do we enforce a rule now and not then.”

After pouring tens of thousands of dollars into the tournament, McCoy believes coming away empty-handed, despite catching the biggest fish, doesn’t make sense.

“There’s a huge amount of money at stake. I’ve got a young mate that would’ve been life-changing for him,” McCoy said.

Money aside, it’s also about principle for McCoy. The Big Rock is about competition and those who win are immortalized. Both feel their shot at that was disqualified.

“There’s only a few winners of the Big Rock and it would’ve been really cool to be one of them,” McCoy said. “Now I think there’s a whole lot of people out there that do think we are the winners. But still, in a year’s time, it’ll probably be forgotten.”