The report:

After 4 years of planning and postponing we finally met up in in The Dokas Restaurant and Bar in Mindelo on Sao Vincente.

54 of the 58 expected participants together with a couple of the skippers and crews, listened to the opening words from the Tournament Director Toine van Ierland, EFSA Netherlands secretary Miranda Koop , a representative from the Mindelo council and the president of the Mindelo Sportfishing Club.

The EFSA European Game Championships was a 3 in 1 combination with The PENN Challenge which is a charity tournament and the Dutch EFSA National Championships.

Last but not least this event is also a qualifier for the Offshore World Championships in Quepos Costa Rica 2023 2 Charity goals Comunidade Sao Pedro and Operacao Carinho were presented with a €1000,00 donation and a promise of a larger donation dependent on the proceeds from the Charity auction to be held at the end of the tournament.

Hein Hoogduin, the weigh master, explained the rules and called all 18 teams up front to draw their boats. All teams received a bag with competition shirts , rules , daily registration forms, a pen and 25 tokens, per person, for drinks for the rest of the week.

Micau Tavares arranged a lovely buffet with local dishes for all to enjoy accompanied with drinks for everybody. The national tv covered the evening.

Day 1 started off with a sturdy breeze,5 bft, which made the water quite choppy. During the day the wind died down. Some boats stayed in the marlin alley and others crossed the channel and went to the islands. Calls were coming in over the radio throughout the day making it very exciting. Day winners were Peter Ouwendijk and Frans van Oss from the Dutch team The Untouchables with 5 marlin.

The Finnish team -Tight Faces-  Eerho Terho , Aarno Holopainen, Matti Sepäiä , Janne Laurila - fishing for the Netherlands came in 2 nd with 4 marlin. This team are true novices when it comes to marlin finshing. Catching 4 on their first trip ever.

3 rd place was for Ireland A , Warren Doyle , Christy Cloak , George Mc Cullough and Shay Mc Donnel, catching 3 marlin. This too is a team which consists of first timers.

In total 33 marlin were caught on 18 boats. That’s an amazing number, even to the local skippers. Cape Verdi sure lived up to the stories everybody heard.

Day 2 The air was buzzing with good vibes. The wind was up to a 6 bft. Everybody was rearing to go. Just like Monday all boats sailed up to the front of the harbor and waited in line for the 7:30 call.

No running allowed to keep the slower boats in the competition. It was an impressionable sight to see 18 Game Boats waiting in line and moving off at the same time.

As soon as the call came in over the radio the boats spread out to their chosen fishing grounds. Once again the radio was alive with chatter. Marlin were being raised all over the place. There were 33 marlin caught by the end of the match. Many more were raised. One team managed to pitch 6 and loose them all, finally blanking after all their effort and hard work

Clube Pesca Nautica a Desportiva,Fernando Nunes , Filipe Bispo , José Amado and Victor Teixeira, Team CPND Albufiera for short hauled in 6 marlin. What an accomplishment.

Broadbill team 1, Gert-Jan Oldenboom, Patrick van Lankhuizen  and Arjan Biesheuvel came in second place with 4 self-pitched marlin. 3 rd was Gibraltar B Charlie Lara, Lester Chipel , Peter Cosquieri , Dom Currer,with 3 marlin. 33 marlin in total despite 4 boats blanking. Could this tournament go any better??

Day 3 the weather turned for the worse. 7bft made fishing very difficult. The blue water had been pushed out even further towards Sao Antao. Boats and anglers were struggling to find fish and draw them up to the surface. Toine van Ierland called it Rock’n & Roll’n, and that it was. High waves 3 to 4 meters coming from all directions as the skippers maneuvered their boats in a zigzag pattern. A far cry from yesterday. Not much chatter on the radio which didn’t do the moral any good.

Once back in the harbor all eyes were towards the skyline to see how many flags were flying. Only 13 caught and released. Ireland A managed to hook a 11.6 kg Wahoo. Unfortunately it was to light for the Non-Pelagic prize. Minimum weight had to be 30kg

Yesterday’s blankers came in as day 3 winners. The Reel Dutch Fishing Team: Toine van Ierland, Hein Hoogduin and Klaas Hoogduin managed to pitch 2 marlin giving them 2200 points. This also meant that Randy Baker on the Dacia was best skipper for a second time.

Team Sequoia: Paulus van de Berk and Roland Baks had 3 marlin, unfortunately 2 on 130lbs rods giving them only 1800 points. Team Marlil: Martin Kets de Vries , Bob Hentenaar, Frank and Miranda Koop, caught 2 marlin but didn’t pitch the baits themselves leaving them with 1600 points. The wild weather made it very difficult and to nobody’s surprise 9 boats blanked today.

The 4th and final day. The weather gods were in our favor. Sun bursting through the clouds , wind down to 5 bft again. It was anyone’s game. The skippers were eager to win with 4 boats in line for first place. John Smith and Roel van Orsel, Team The Dutch Anglers on the Sea Quest probably had the best day of their lives. The first time Marlin anglers had a triple hookup.

The team ended the day as winning team with 5 marlin. Samir Rahal and Mahmoud Mroueh from team Dakar came in second on the Nha Cretcheu. Ireland A managed yet another second 3 rd place with 2 marlin.

Ireland A and The Dutch Anglers were the only 2 teams to have fish every day. Ireland even had the luxury of dropping 1100 points seeing only the 3 best results counted. It didn’t help them much in the end as they ended in 7 th position.

The EFSA European Big Game Champion/ The Penn Challenge Champion:

Gold: Team Dakar, fishing for The Netherlands                 7100 points

Silver: Clube Pesca Nautica e di Desportiva Portugal        6700 points

Bronze: The Dutch Anglers fishing for The Netherlands     6400 points

The Untouchable and Tight Faces also both had 6400 points. It came down to when the first fish catch time was noted on the score sheets , just 4 minutes difference!

Team Dakar/ the Netherlands also represent EFSA The Netherlands in The Offshore World
Championships in Costa Rica 2023. We wish then the best of luck and Tight lines.

Dutch National Champion: Team Dakar
Silver: The Dutch Anglers
The Untouchables received the Dutch National Marlin bronze pins

Best skipper is Zak Conde on the Amelia writing up 14 marlin
Second best skipper Randy Baker on the Dacia 10 marlin
And thanks to the last day win Steve George on the Sea Quest won the prize for third best
skipper with 10 marlin, putting him 400 point in front of the La Onda Mila.

All winners received the EFSA medals, Game pins and prizes from PENN- Overseas travel
rods and PENN Slammer reels.

A big thank you to PENN Europe , Andy Moyes Big Game Tacticals, Ray Marine, Terruo-Bi,
Legitiem, Makaira Adventure , Plain Vanilla, Maasland Vleeswaren for their sponsoring of the
skipper day prizes and team prizes and contributing to the Charity auction.

A big thank you also goes out to all the people who bought something in our Charity Auction.
The children of Sao Pedro and Mindelo thank you from the bottom of their hearts. We raised
an astonishing € 10.150,00 on top of the € 2.000,00 already given to the Charity goals. The
representative of Operacão Carinho was brought to tears when she heard how much money
had been donated.

Micua Tavares from Restaurant DOKAS did a great buffet again with local dishes. Everybody
seemed to really be enjoying themselves during the prize presentation and auction.
Judging by all the positive feedback, this was a terrific event definitely worth repeating.
Participants and skippers were asking for the new date. South Africa is next in line in 2024
after then we will see.

Miranda Koop
Secretary EFSA The Netherlands

March 20 2021:

The tournamenst hes been postponed to 25, 26, 27 and 28 April 2022

March 29 2020:

Dear all,

The world is one big mess at the moment. The Covid 19 virus is forcing all countries to take precautions to minimize the risks of spreading the disease. Borders are closed, airports closed, and most countries in (partial -) lock down. Social life is down to zero.

Cape Verde locked her borders for all travels from Europe and many other countries. Our contacts in Sao Vicente expect that travel to the island will be prohibited at least till the beginning of May. With that in mind we had to make a decision regarding the 2020 EFSA European Championship Big Game Fishing.

Options

In fact we had two options, cancel the tournament or try to postpone. Our decision is based on our goal to minimize the consequences for our participants.

1. Cancel the tournament

That would mean all participants loose a part of their entry fee due to costs we already made (like for instance tournament shirts) and the down payments on the boats. Next to that all participants will have issues with their booked flights.

2. Postpone to next year

For all involved, participants, sponsors, skippers, hotels and restaurants, the best option. Postpone to next year. Meaning we had to ask a big favor from the Mindelo fleet owners. Our proposal was to posthone to beginning of May 2021 and give priority to the tournament over already made bookings for that period. We also had to ask them to regard the already transfered down payments as down payment on the 2021 tournament as most owners handle a withdrawal fee of 50% of the boat hire.  

Tournament postponed

This week we contacted all our boat owners/skippers to review the option to postpone the tournament to May 2021. At this moment 15 of the 18 owners/skippers agreed to skip the 2020 tournament without financial consequenses. The down payments on the boats will be regarded as down payments on the 2021 tournament.  Two owners are small business operators. They just can’t survive this crisis without charging costs for cancellation. One owner isn’t reached yet.

New dates

April, May and June are by far the best months to catch multiple blue marlin per trip. We insisted to postpone the 2020 tournament to the same week in 2021.

The new dates are 9, 10, 11 and 12th of May 2021.

Consequences

Most of our skippers agreed to the new terms  but we still have to make financial arrangements with two owners. We are confident we can keep the costs of cancellation down to about € 3.000. This would implicate that each team will be charged with an additional fee of max. € 175. And, let’s be honest. That sounds a whole lot better than loosing a few thousand Euros per team in case we had to cancel the tournament.

Considering the circumstances we think we made the right decision. We hope you will understand.

See you next year in Mindelo, Cape Verde! Stay safe and healthy.

Best regards,

Toine van Ierland

Tournament Director

2020 EFSA EUROPEAN BIG GAME TOURNAMENT Mindelo, Cape Verde 11, 12, 13 and 14th of May 2020

2020 EFSA European big game tournament for teams fishing out of Mindelo!

We are proud to announce that in 2020 the EFSA Big game tournament for teams will be held at the Blue marlin capital of the world; the isle of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. EFSA headquarters in Mindelo will be at The Sportfishing Club, Mindelo! Entry to the tournament needs to be completed as soon as possible.

EFSA Netherlands has an option on all boats, ending at the beginning of 2019.

Species Blue marlin, blue marlin and blue marlin! Occasionally a white marlin and maybe a spearfish. Wahooare always around, andmaybe big yellowfin and/or bigeye tuna. April, May and June are by far the best months to catch multiple marlin in a day.In 2017, participants in The PENN Challenge (15 teams) caught 109 blue marlin over 5 days. The heaviest marlin was estimated 900+ lbs. The tournament setup We will fish over four days and teams will be on different boats each day. We can provide a maximum of 15 boats in the tournament. Amongst these boats are the Mindelo top boats, La Onda Andromeda (Olaf Grimkowski), La Onda Mila (Marty Bates), Amelia ll (Zak Conde), Smoker (Matthias Henningsen),Hebe (Bert Bouchard) Victoria, (Bryan Matiba), Sambo (Marco Canu) as well as Eric Leblond’s Sirategui, Stuart Simpson’s NhaCretcheu and Steve George’s Sea Quest and many others. In fact, the complete Mindelo fleet has agreed to compete in the 2020 tournament. IGFA &Offshore World Championship (OWC) EFSA supports the goals of IGFA. We will fish by IGFA ruleswherever possible.

The 2020 EFSA Big Game Tournament is also an Qualifying Event for the Offshore World Championship (OWC). The winning team will be invited to participate in the prestigious Offshore World Championship 2021. Flights and stay Participants have to book their own flights and make their own reservations. We strongly recommend booking The Blue Marlin Hotel in the vicinity of the harbour. Or, alternatively the Don Paco Hotel is near to the harbour. www.bluemarlinhotel.net www.donpacohotel.com

Both hotels are offering a special tournament rate for EFSA Participants. Charity goal The 2020 tournament is organized by EFSA Netherlands. Some of our members have visited Mindelo before and opted to add a charitable donation to the 2020 tournament. The tournament’s charity donation will be the support of the children & teens shelters of ICCA Mindelo. The shelters provides aid to orphans and mistreated or abused children. In 2017 the participants, most of them EFSA members, sponsors and crews in the PENN Challenge raised over € 9.000 for ICCA Mindelo. Costs Tournaments costs: Two person team € 5.000 costs p.p. €2.500 Three person team € 5.200 costs p.p. €1.735 Four person team € 5.400 costsp.p, €1.350 Included are four full days fishing, Tournament shirts, welcoming party, Closing dinner, Daily drinks at the Mindelo Sportfishing Club, Contribution to charity , et cetera. Not included are costs of flights, hotels, transfers and daily food/beverages. The tournament costs can vary up to € 200 per team depending on the number of entries. All surplus after deducting the tournaments costs go directly to our charity in Mindelo.

Entry Due to the fact that only 16 boats are available in Mindelo. We are using two entry periods. The first entry period is open to only one team per country and starts today. The first period ends on November 15th 2018. The second period starts at November 22th and is open to all EFSA Members. The second period ends on December 31 2019. Info and Entry to the 2020 EFSA EU Championship. Send an email to our tournament directorToine van Ierland: aierland@xs4all.nlor EFSA Netherlands president Frans van Oss: fransvanoss@upcmail.nl Down payment Your entry is completed after transferring a deposit of € 500 per person to ABN AMRO Bank, BIC code; ABNANL2A, IBANaccountnumber NL17ABNA0812614747, account name,EuropeanFederation of Sea Anglers, add the following text “Entry 2020 EFSA EU Tournament, your name and country you represent”.

Entry is binding. Deposits are non-refundable, unless you find a replacement team to compete in the 2020 tournament. Flights, transfers and hotel costs are not included. Participants travel to and stay in Mindelo at their own risk.