Slow Baja - Bisbee’s Black & Blue Marlin Tournament the Super-Bowl of Billfishing.

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Sports Illustrated called Bisbee’s Black & Blue Marlin Tournament the “Super-Bowl of Billfishing.” Now in its 40th year, with prizes and payouts in the millions of dollars, it is the richest independent family-run fishing tournament. The event was founded in 1981 by Bob Bisbee Sr., who ran a fuel dock, and tackle shop in Newport, California. He was always looking for reasons to go to Cabo, and the idea of hosting a golf-style Calcutta sweepstakes Marlin tournament seemed like a good one. Six boats entered the first Bisbee tournament, and Bob Sr. won the $10,000 prize. Last year, 126 boats and 862 anglers took part, and the prize payout was a whopping $4,500,000! In this conversation, Wayne Bisbee and his daughter Jordyn Bisbee talk about their world-famous Black and Blue Marlin tournament. They reflect on Bob Sr., who passed away earlier this year and how the little competition he started forty years ago has grown into a world-renowned billfish bonanza. We also discuss the Bisbee’s East Cape Offshore -a relaxed, three species tournament in Los Barriles August 4-8, 2020 Visit Bisbee’s website here. Visit Bisbee’s conservation fund website here. Follow Bisbee’s on Facebook Visit Bisbee’s YouTube Channel here.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning in to the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Hey, Slow Baja is brought to you by the Baja XL rally. The Baja XL is the largest and longest amateur off-road rally on the Baja Peninsula. It's 10 Epic Days, L.A. to Cabo to L.A. Check it out at BajaxL.org. All right, so thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. Today's guests are Jordan and Wayne Bisbee.

It's a father and daughter, and they run the famous Bisbee's Black and Blue Marlin Tournament in Cabo and Bisbee's East Cape offshore, the multi-species Marlin, tuna, and Dorado. Do I have that right, Wayne? Yep, you've got it right there. All right. And Jordan, you run the Bisbee Conservation Fund, right? So I help my dad with the Bisbee's Conservation Fund too. And I can't say that I help run the Bisbee's black and blue. It's my dad and my aunt Trish.

She is a rock star. She's his right hand when it comes to the tournament. So I don't want to take too much credit for the tournament. We have to include her as well for that title. All right. Well, we didn't link Trish into the Zoom call here, but Wayne got his Zoom stuff downloaded minutes before showtime. So I'm really glad that I've got both of you on the line.

And I just want to start with, tell me about your dad, Wayne. Tell me about Bob Bisby, Sr. And how he went from running a fuel dock in Balbo Island to creating the basically, as I understand it, the Super Bowl of sports fishing. Yeah, now he had the fuel dock and tackle store on Balboa Island in Newport Harbor from, well, he was actually on a fuel dock down there managing one since the late 50s. and ended up buying one the business in mid, early 70s.

And it just, it happened to be the busier of the two or three fuel docks that are in the harbor. So knew most of the majority of the boats there and worked with them. And the West Coast boats, their pattern, or their circuit, if you would, for the year is to winter down in Mexico. And then they summer,

up in California, possibly up to Alaska. So the fuel dock was actually their last stop when they were getting ready to go down for the winter. We were their last stop on the fuel dock provisioning, fueling, changing oil, et cetera. And then we were their first stop when they got back, you know, several months later. And throughout the time they were gone,

the fuel dock turned into the supply chain. You know, we set up a base. station radio because there was no cell phones in or excuse me no phones for the most part you know landlines that there were three in Cabo back in the 70s and 80s and no cell phones whatsoever of course so the communication between the boats and them talking to the bosses or their families or anything was done through the single sideband radios that the boats have we put in a base station in the tackle store and if they needed parts or needed to convey messages and schedules for who's going in and out of, you know, town down there.

It was us. And so that went on for, you know, the better part of 15 years, 20 years until communications got better down there and it's hard for me. I'm going to jump in here. It's hard for me to realize, but I've had these conversations with others about, I don't want to say primitive isn't the right word. But Baja was kind of remote. And even in the 70s or 80s where, you know, people were making calls and, you know, to think about you guys where the link, if somebody needed something or if somebody broke down, that it all went through your fuel dock and tackle store.

Yeah, it virtually all went through us. I read about it. It did. It seemed like it. If it would be diapers, you guys got them. Exactly. No, I mean, gosh, you know anything? I mean, you know, we'd pick up the calls from a boat sinking down there one time.

And it was off of Baja about 100 miles or so when they were calling Mayday. And we picked up the call and called the Coast Guard station in Newport and said, hey, you got to get on Channel 12A. You got a boat going down. And it was an 80-foot boat with a half a dozen people getting into the skiffs to start drifting while the big boat sank from underneath them. And, you know, they got the Coast Guard down there to save their lives. Amazing.

Amazing. Well, Wayne, jump into 1981 and how your dad, Bob, pulled off that first tournament. Well, the first tournament was, I mean, the tournament origins were, it was designed, it was never designed to be a standalone business. It was designed to be, one, a reason for my dad to have an excuse to go to Cabo Moore. I don't know anything about that. Right. And two, the theory was that, well, you sell fish and tackle. If you're giving them a reason to put fish and tackle in the water more frequently, they'll use more, lose more, and buy more.

So it was a marketing vehicle for the tackle store. Well, it sounds like it morphed a little from there. There's some, the first folks, including your dad, must have a great time. And I'm a guy who certainly wants excuses to get to Baja. So it seemed to have, what, doubled year after year after year? Did that be a conservative? Did it grow? Down there, back in the day, you know, you had 20, 30 boats that were in the harbor on anchor

because there was no marina or anything back then or on the moraines outside in the outer harbor. And, you know, they saw half a dozen boats kind of lined up. It was six boats on the first tournament, $10,000 in prize money. And my brother, my older brother was the captain of my dad had a 46th. down there those years. And my brother was the captain of it. My dad was one of the anglers with a couple of buddies. And they all took off. And I think it was a two-day tournament, if I remember, right, about the first year or two. And when they came back in, there was kind of some hoopla and this and that going on. Of course, it was all taking place in the one or two, three bars

they had down there at the time. And the guy, you know, the other guys on the other 15 or 20 votes were saying, what's going on? And well, it's a tournament, this, that, and the other thing. and what we want in. So they did another one, and it went to 13 boats was the second year, or the second tournament. And then, you know, same kind of thing. Just again, you know, with more and more,

and it just literally would double, you know, every tournament for that first half a dozen years. And by the time three or four of them took place, yeah, there's 30, 40 boats in the thing, and the prize money was up considerably. And, you know, nothing like it is today, but it just kind of became its own animal. And so explain to the folks, you know, I've done a little Dorado fishing,

but I've never done any tournament fishing. I'm not very well acquainted with how the inner workings of putting on something like that goes. So explain that to the Slow Baja world. What does a Bisbee's Billfish tournament look like? Well, it's chaos. Yeah, like how do we put it into words? You've got to see it. If I'm not mistaken, you get people from all over the world for this, right?

Oh, yeah. Now we'll have upwards of 17, 18 countries take place. I mean, 10% of our fleet for the last half a dozen years, 10% of our participation has come from the ex-Eastern bloc countries of the Soviet Union, Georgia, Ukraine, you know, Russia, of course. And then the other, you know, 5% are from there. And the other 5% are from Japan of all places. We've got half a dozen Japanese teams every year,

and they bring their own television crews down and make a big thing out of it. So they come from a far. It's a big thing. But you still haven't explained how this tournament works. So do your best to explain it to me. Yeah, to try to kind of quantify it simply, it's we create a venue schedule. and have entry fee structures where you pay X amount of dollar. We have a base entry fee, which for the big tournament,

where I'm kind of referring to, in fact, that's what we've been talking about. We do three tournaments. The black and blue is our big one. It's black and blue Marlin only. And that one is our biggest in the one that we're known for with the $4.5 million in prize money. I want to say that again.

I'm not sure everybody heard you. Yeah, $4.5 million. prize money last year, actually a little bit over that. Four and a half million. I'm laughing. Four and a half million dollar prize. That's amazing. No wonder Sports Illustrated called you guys this Super Bowl of sports fishing. That's totally Toledo. It's gotten crazy and it kind of just keeps growing. But anyway, for that tournament in particular, the base entry that you have to pay to get into the tournament is $5,000. And that gets you into the overall standings for the biggest fish of the overall tournament, the biggest, we pay out for the top three individual biggest fish, and then the first place

teams down to fifth place. And so that cover, that's roughly three quarters of a million dollars in prize money depending on how many boats are in, because that's where we get the prize money is from these entry fees. And then on top of the top of the cost. of that think of it as a slot machine you can put one quarter in or five quarters in and that dictates what you what you get if you hit hit the jackpot and those are daily jackpots that are you know for all three days and the our quarters are just a little bit bigger than quarters so they started five hundred dollars a day for a daily jackpot and it goes all the way to twenty thousand dollars a day so you

You could conceivably spend, if you get in across the board, you could conceivably spend $120,000 on entry fees. And that's where the extra $3.5 million comes from. That's when they say you've got to be in it to win it. Absolutely. It's a little bit bigger than the pop machine order, like I said. You've got to have some deep pockets. So this is truly extraordinary to me. Again, I've seen the advertisements.

I've seen the T-shirts. I've seen the dudes wearing the t-shirts, and people must really be nuts doing this. They must really love it. This has to be utterly exciting when your shotgun start goes. Yeah, I mean, you start talking about it. I mean, even me sitting here right now talking to you. I mean, if I describe the start, which is a mile and a half wide, and think about how many hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware spread out on that bay

and a flare goes off and they all smoke, whole, you know, I mean, full throttle off to go to where they think they go. They need to be to catch that fish. I mean, my hair stands up on my arms talking about it right now and I've seen it 35 times. That's amazing. So is it like the Baja 1000 and in that there's a lot of scouting and pre-running, so to speak. Is there pre-fishing? How do people prepare for this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they'll be out there several days in advance.

They'll fly in for the tournament, you know, a week ahead of time. And if they're not, the owners, let's say, of the boat or the charter people, the boats themselves accrues, they're out scouting on where they think they need to be during the three days. So it's a lot of, there's a lot of pre-tournament, you know, yes, scouting, but also equipment, you know, I mean, relining your reels, you know, that way the lines new, you know, sharpening hooks, setting drags. There's a lot that goes on the five or six, seven days before the tournament that they're all doing. Because, I mean, they're serious about it. There's prize money. I mean, those daily jackpots I was talking about are $1.25 million per day.

And, you know, that's serious dough. no matter who you are, even if you're on Bitcoin. Yeah, that's not just a day out on the bay for some bass. That's serious. Wow. Well, how did it go, how did it get that way? Was it just the mathematics of more boats, more money? Or is there huge sponsorships again, enlighten me?

Because I am, you know, getting into this, I'm fairly ignorant on how this all works. I'm assuming that more boats, more money, bigger prizes, but I'm also assuming that that formula probably went out the window a long time ago and there's big sponsors here. Yeah, you know, believe it or not, I mean, that is the formula and it didn't go out the window. For all of our, I don't know what you want to call it, for all of our fame and whatever and success, you know, our sponsorships, you know, really aren't out of the industry. They're generally in the fishing and the boating industry still. We don't have national brand advertisers, really.

I mean, sure, we get a beer company. Excuse me. And every now and then a liquor company and all. But for the most part, it's remained kind of in our wheelhouse of marine-type companies. We're trying and we want more, that's for sure. But, you know, we're... I'm sorry. I'm going to choke on me.

Yeah, I'm going to cut to Jordan, and she's going to talk about growing up in this family business while Wayne finishes his tequila. On the rock. I don't know. I hope from one Baja lover to another, you do enjoy tequila because I do. All of us do. All right.

Terrific. So I'm sorry. I didn't want to offend you. No, no. So I mean, I did absolutely grow up in this. My brother, too, my other brother named Blake. And we've been going down to Bisbee's since we were kids. I mean, there's pictures of my grandma and grandpa holding me up to kiss the Marlin at the

way station when I was two or three years old, much to my mom's dismay. And, you know, just from there, we would go down as kids and just kind of run around, go crazy. And we didn't quite understand the whole concept of it. You know, we're kids. We just, you know, knew that my dad did a fishing tournament. And then as we got older, I think the one thing that I really appreciate, you know, as an adult now that I'm, you know, becoming more involved with the tournament and the conservation

fund is just, it's pretty rare to have this international family business that's still family. And to be a part of something that my grandpa created 40 years ago that my dad and my Aunt Trisha, you know, now run. And then my brother and I come down, my cousin Carrie. It truly is this family run event. And to now, like my dad said, have over four and a half million dollars in prize money, 13,8, different countries that fish and all these boats and thousands of people down there every year, it's absolutely incredible. And it's so special. And, you know, just to kind of see it firsthand. Like I said, you can't really describe Bisbee's unless you've been down there. But just the energy, the energy from the anglers, energy from the people that live

down there, the energy from our family, it's absolutely incredible. And it's such a cool experience. I've loved being able to grow up and, you know, work alongside my dad and my Aunt Tricia and just kind of watch this grow year to year. It's incredible. Well, tell me a little bit about the work you're doing with the Conservation Fund. Tell me about some projects you have going now or maybe some past projects and what your future goals are. Yes, so we started the conservation fund. I want to say, Dad, was it 2013 that we started the Bisbee's Fish and Wildlife? I hope Wayne survived.

He probably, no, he's drinking as tequila, so I'll continue. All right. But I actually, so I grew up, you know, so I grew up, you know, obviously in a family that was, you know, focused on fishing and conservation. And actually this year I just hopped on board as kind of the director of development to help my dad. And we have quite a few projects that we're working on. One is our scholarship program.

The Conservation Fund, as well as the Green Scholarship Program, we actually, actually instituted, it's called the Bisbee's Marine Biology Scholarship Program. And to date, we've actually put 12 students from the Los Cabos area through this program, and it's based at La Paz University in Mexico. And we have our first four graduates, which is absolutely incredible to know that we're helping these students get an education and they have a passion towards environment and science. And we're making, you know, their dreams come too and giving them an opportunity to kind of launch them into careers that are just going to be absolutely incredible. So we work with the scholarship program. We also are doing an I-tag program. So basically what it is

is we're kind of creating a new comprehensive radio frequency identification tagging program, not to nerd out and sound super ducky. For the fish, right? For the fish, correct. So tagging has been around for decades, but it's kind of archaic the way that it's done. And what we're doing is we're creating new tags, these RFID chips that are, they interact with an Android and a smartphone. And so it's kind of the same and they're applied the same way when you're tagging a fish. But this technology is completely advanced where when you tag a fish back with old school

tagging methods, you know, you tag the fish, you have to write down species, boat name, you mail it in, you know, you wait for it to get to these agencies that have to manually enter this data and with what we're creating, it's instantaneous. So it basically from tagging the fish, downloading the free app, the app then pops up. You can enter the wait, the angler name. You can submit it instantly into this secure database. It's going to change and revolutionize tagging as we know it. So that one's really exciting. So that is, you know, our tagging program. If I can jump in on you, Jordan, I'm back. Oh, yeah. Welcome back, Wayne.

to disappear and cough up a lung for a second there, but I'm glad you survived. Exactly. And it was water of all things. That's that water. You've seen what it does to both. And now you know what it does to the inside of a body. So anyway, to further what she was saying on that tagging, the revolutionary thing about it is as all what she said. But I think the coolest thing is that it's instantaneously available to all of the scientists around the world. Instead of waiting through that process she described where somebody's manually inputting data and then waiting for somebody to next put it on to online somewhere or mail it to a scientist somewhere. It's instantaneously available and because it's tied into all of the elements that are already, you know,

online, you know, whether it be, you know, the, the weather, the currents, the tides, you know, all of that stuff is tied in. There's 20. 20-some-odd data elements that are tied into submitting that tag report versus the three or four manual elements, which are simply species, time, angler, estimated size of fish, and that's pretty much all the data that's historically been available from a tagging program. Now it's about 25 data elements that are all, you know, that all pertain to helping these scientists get that much more information for their studies. Yeah. And so are those fish then trackable via an app that's on your phone for the rest of their life? Is that how that works? They're not trackable. It's still a, it's, they're not, there are satellite tags out there where they're trackable as they continue on. Those are

$5,000 a piece. Those are the ones that are on Great White sharks that show you they're all. Exactly. They're not in Sanford, Cisco anymore. They've gone to the East Coast. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys, We actually have a satellite tagging program. We call it our off-source safaris. It's a separate program that's more geared in finite areas. Like you just said for the Great White Sharks, they had areas where they said, come in. We want to focus on this population. We do the same thing with whatever species scientists may need in whatever region.

And we organize a dozen boats in that area and a plunk a dozen satellites in them, satellite tags. We raised the $5,000 each for them, et cetera. In this case, these RFID I tags were calling them. The second coolest thing, I said the first coolest thing was that they instantaneously get the information to the scientists, probably the second coolest thing is that they're exactly the same price as the traditional plastic spaghetti tags

that have been around for the 40 years, which is about $2 to $3 apiece. Amazing. So in the $2 to $3 tag, realm, you know, the, you cannot track them, you know, you have to have a point A, point B to get your research. You have to re-recover the fish in order to get the data from it. But at the same token, at $2 a piece, you know, you can get tens of thousands, if not 100,000 of them a year out in the water. Well, with a mile and a half of boats going out to catch them, you're going to get those

fish eventually. There you go. You're going to bring them in one way or another. Yep, and that nice thing is on the re-recovery, you don't have to take the fish. You know, all you simply do is hold your handheld, you know, your Android or your iPhone up to it, and the data is transmitted to it. It's a passive tag, which means it's activated by when you hit a button on your cell phone and hold it near it, and all the data dumps to it. And the fish, you don't even have to take the tag out to recover the data. You just simply let the fish re-release them, and he's good to go.

for the next time he's caught. Yeah, so enlighten us on that because, you know, certainly I've done some fly fishing, and I know, you know, with wild trout, you're nine times out of 10 or nine and a half or 9.9 times out of 10, you're letting those wild trout go back. What percentage of fish are being caught multiple times? Do you have any idea? What's your estimate on that? You know, I wouldn't be able to tell you a lot of them, you know, a lot of the data because of some cooperation now with the commercial industry, unfortunately the commercial industry are the ones that catch the majority of the fish, which is bad because they don't re-release them. If they do,

they're not swimming when they do. Yeah. You know, it's a big, it's kind of your recreational versus commercial war that's been going on forever. I mean, you know, the fisheries management side with the different countries of the world, these animals don't, don't pay attention to geography and in state and country, you know, zones, they go all over the world or all over the oceans. And, you know, there is a commercial problem with fishing. And they're the ones that actually do catch more fish than recreational people do. You know, sea turtles released in the Bay of L.A. end up in fishermen's nets in Japan. It's an amazing, an amazing journey that a lot of people don't have any understanding.

You can't, you can't just have them swim around in circles there. Hey, so back to the conservation way now that we've got you on board, how do you keep these species going? Excuse me, I'm just asking totally ignorantly, how does one, like, I'm well aware of all the work being done in the duck world, getting habitat for ducks so that they can lay their eggs so that, you know, people have ducks to hunt when it's hunting season. But that conservation of preserving those duck lands, those habitat all the way up and down North America does wonder. for the area that those ducks fly through. What's it like in fishing? In fishing, we can't control, obviously, the, you know, gain control of an area with, you know,

like you can with the duck world where you purchase an own land, you know, breeding land. But in our case, what we can do is fight the commercial fisheries rules and laws. And it's on a world scale, as I said, So we're always supporting and helping to fund the management laws trying to get them better, you know, where there's time and area closures, let's say, in zones and whatnot. On the recreational fisheries side, meaning guys on their boats, our guys, you know, the catch and release has just become the norm.

And that is kind of a, hey, put up, you know, put up or shut up kind of thing. It's a, we're showing you by example, what needs to be done. And that will help perpetuate and grow the species. So we're actually not just talking the talk. We're walking the walk on the conservation side, because that's only fair. If we're expecting them to do better, we should do better. And that's been going on for a number of years now, kind of around the world, in the recreational side.

I mean, you know, charter operations and even governments are recognizing that recreational fishing is not by any means hurting an industry. And, you know, the effort is now to convince governments to change laws for the commercial side of it to get them to pay, to do better. And it's an ongoing battle by all means. You know, tournaments like ours, if our tournament took place, three, 365 days a year in Cabo San Lucas, the actual mortality rate of the harbor, you know, meaning the fish that are killed throughout the entire year.

If our tournament ran every day of the year, the mortality rate would be down to probably 2% of what it is in reality because people go down there and they'll kill a Marlin and then to take their picture and all that from a tourist standpoint. In our tournament, we have a 300 pound minimum. So 97, 98% of our fish caught in the tournament are released. Whereas if they weren't in a tournament, they might otherwise have been taken by a tourist on his first time ever fishing. Yeah, and mounted and end up on their wall and then in a garage sale years later, like how I bought my Marlin. I bought one at a garage sale.

I hate to say it, but the wife didn't want it anymore. Yeah. Now, the nice thing is there's lots of molds out now. and they're all fiberglass molds, which is great because they last longer than the trophy you're talking about anyway. Hey, let's pivot back to give me some reflections on your dad. Again, not only was he a pioneer in getting this fishing tournament going, but this fishing tournament must have done amazing things to fuel the growth of Cabo San Lucas. I'm guessing, but he must have had a hand in that.

It brought a lot of attention to it as what it did. You know, Cabo back in the day when we were little kids, it was a small place that a bunch of Southern California boat owners knew about, and that was it. I mean, the rest of the world didn't know what Baja was, didn't, you know, Cabo San Lucas, no clue. And it was because as the tournament grew in the fishing community, it's words started getting out, and people are starting to ask questions, where is this place? What's this all about? What's this tournament thing? And so it actually, you know, it actually helped Cabo get on the map from an awareness standpoint, which, of course, you know, started, you know, started leading it to where it's at in today's world. So it was integral in that because Cabo back then didn't have anything going on. Gosh, to fly down. You had the once a week flight. It was a little Quonset hut style airport. And gosh, you couldn't, I mean, you'd fly into La Paz. half the time and drive three hours to get to Cabo because they didn't have any plane service to it. They sure didn't have cruise shippers going to it. Yeah, just to hear you say that there wasn't any marina, that just made me think about like,

oh, yeah, there wasn't a marina. You were just mooring those things. And then, of course, because you're mooring boats and they're not in a protected marina, they're exposed. And so you've got storms and other things that could have really wreaked havoc on that until Cabo grew up a little bit. Yeah, now there was always back in the, you know, 70s and 80s, boats could not be down there.

And, you know, in the summertime, insurance companies wouldn't insure them because there was no safe harbor. And that actually led to the mooring structure. I mentioned it earlier where we, my dad actually, you know, I ran it for, gosh, 1984 to 1987. I ran the mooring company. But my dad created, you know, our biggest years were 110 moorings that are big, you know, anchors, setups that are much safer to be on than your own boat anchor. And the mooring company was created because, you know, the insurance companies would then allow them to be down longer in the year and stay in Kabul longer to fish longer because the morings were safer, but it still wasn't a safe harbor, which led to,

eventually the marina being built. And when, gosh, I remember when I heard there was going to be a marina in Cabo, we all laughed. I think I had just had Jordan and Blake, you know, as babies. And we were like, oh, my gosh, Jordan and Blake will be grandparents themselves by the time, you know, they ever put a marina in this town. Could you imagine? And look at it out. Mr. Gomez, right. Hey, you know that we're itching to get our old Land Cruiser south of the border soon?

And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. The website is fast and easy to use. You can check them out at BajaBound.com and tell them slow Baja sent you. Obviously, your family spent so much time in Cabo San Lucas. Do you have other favorite spots in Baja? Do you spend any time in Baja, or is it just the work of this tournament has sort of destroyed Baja as a recreational family vacation place for your family? Yeah, no, it hasn't destroyed it at all. I mean, it's literally a second home for our family.

But other places, I mean, personally, if we weren't involved in the tournament, you know, and didn't have such a base growing up in Cabo, I think I'd probably be sitting in Loretto a lot. I mean, I love the Loretto area. Jordan can tell you about fishing there over growing up years and quiet, et cetera. And, you know, I've always loved it. You know, we drive the peninsula quite a bit over the decades, you know, I mean, gosh, you know, from Newport Beach, California to Cabo, you know, that was a normal, what are you doing this weekend? Now, let's drive down to Cabo. So we would stop everywhere along the way and beach camp

at Bay of conception for three and four days at a time and, you know, explore just all the different places, you know, go out to Mag Bay and check it out. So, you know, there's... Stop for lobster enchiladas at Mama Esphibati. knows us. There you go. There you go. I remember. I remember. It's funny, the flavors that you develop when your family goes to Baja a lot. I love that. Yeah, those beaches. I was going to say those beaches on Concepcion Bay are pretty extraordinary, South of Mulehe there. That's a, that's a lovely little stretch of the country. And that's really what I was getting after. Like, where are some of your favorite spots? And you, you, you,

at Loretto, I fished, caught my first Dorado there 2012. It was just interesting being in a place, you know, in July 4th, basically, you know, the only people in town were people who were fishing Dorado, it seemed like. That's where I caught my first Dorado was in Laredo. We used to do, there's a fishing for the mission was a tournament down there. And it was kind of where my dad, my brother and I would sneak out and go show some support for that awesome tournament. And that's where I caught my Sturato was in Laredo. Gosh, I was about 15 years ago. We'll just leave it at that.

No age necessary, but it was about 15 years ago. But it's an awesome spot for catching Gerado. Jordan, do you feel some weight, or Wayne, do you feel some weight of carrying this family legacy? Like you just said, Jordan, that you had to show some support for somebody else running a tournament, a charity tournament. Do you feel some weight of having this, having started this, your dad, grandpa started this? And now it's really a family enterprise.

And certainly it's grown and grown and grown. And as I said before, it's been called by Sports Illustrated, the Super Bowl of fishing. I mean, it's amazing that something that, you know, somebody in your family created, A, has lasted 40 years and B has grown and C. So tell me how that feels. I can like I said earlier, it's something that it's so special and it's so rare. You know, and like I said earlier, the fact that we have been,

been altogether doing this as a family for 40 years. And it stayed in our family is pretty incredible. So I wouldn't say there's a pressure, because that doesn't make it sound like it's coming from my heart. But I know my brother and I, we love it. I mean, we love Busby's. We love getting involved in helping my dad and helping my Aunt Trisha.

And we started from just like giving out t-shirts to now we're helping with registration and we're helping at the Way Station. And we're kind of trying to learn the ropes and the ends and outs of, you know, our family's tournament. And so I think that's kind of where our passion stems from is one, we love our family. And two, it's such an incredibly cool concept that what started is just my grandpa sitting out

a table with his buddies just being like, hey, you want to fish? Now, you know, we're reading articles about Bisbee's and Sports Illustrated or I'll be at an airport in Florida or in a different state. And my husband and I look over. I'm like, holy cow, that's a Bisbee's T-shirt, you know. it's pretty neat to be in a family that has touched so many different lives and so many different spots all over the world. It's absolutely incredible.

So I love it. I love being involved in it. And, you know, my dad's definitely not passing a torch anytime soon. He's still young, strong light bowl. But, you know, it's something that's a young buck. Don't write me off yet. You're just a young buck. You're just a young buck.

But it's something that my brother and I definitely, definitely will continue to be involved in for as long as the tournament will continue to grow. And I plan on it keeping to grow for a while. Wayne, tell me about that. Yeah, no, she's right. It's something that just, it's not just, it's not a job, it's not a this. It literally is our life, you know. Gosh, I mean, the first year, 82 was the first tournament, and that was the year I graduated high school.

So, I mean, we've had it going on, you know, since then. And that's your whole adult life when you think about it. I mean, Baja in general, you were on the Baja topic. I spent two weeks a year on summer break sitting in Pliocanasana's back in Bay of Conception from 1978, 9, 1980 and 81, you know, sitting on the beach there, you know, doing the wakeboarding and the water skiing and all of that and fishing, you know, gosh, to keep going back at that young age, you must like it. Yeah, it's good work if you can get it.

I started out in San Felipe at about 84, so I graduated a couple years after you and went to San Diego State. And the first, you know, spring break, we were off to San Felipe. And so that was my first time on the, on the Sea of Cortez side. And then as I eventually worked my way down to spots Mulahey and then south, there's a lot of, there's still a lot of empty space down there. Oh, yeah. So you get it. Definitely.

It kind of gets in your blood that peninsula. I mean, it's an awesome, awesome place in the world that I've been a lot of places in the world. Well, you've been awfully generous with your time. Tell me a little bit about the future for Bisbee's and tell me a little,

you know, give me something positive to go out on. Oh, gosh. Future-wise, we're going to have the kids step up to the plate more and more each year. That's for sure. with new creative ideas.

There's a lot of the tech world that, you know, can be incorporated to broaden our reach even more that they're better at than us old people. We've got a feature length, or we don't have, excuse me, there's a feature length movie. So to tell your people to pay attention and look for, it's called On the Line. And it's actually a feature length movie.

Dennis Quaid is the main star in it. And it's about the 19, or excuse me, me the 2014 tournament where we almost got shut down and didn't have the tournament by Hurricane O'Dill and the town in fact got destroyed by Hurricane O'Dill. And that year we gave a lot of free tournament entries away to people to try to get, you know, to try to just have the tournament basically. And one of the teams that we gave a free entry to was the orphanage, the local orphanage in town, the Casa Hogarth. And son of a gun of those kids, the orphan's on the boat, they won the tournament that year.

Now, you can't write that film. That's amazing. You didn't have to write it. I mean, in Hollywood, couldn't have written a better story. So it's about, I haven't seen the movie yet. It's in post-production theoretically going to be done by October. And it's actually about the orphan. It's, you know, getting into the tournament and winning it against all these guys in their big gazillion-dollar battle wagons.

So watch that, because I think that's going to bring a lot of cool awareness to the tournament too and and to the orphanage for that matter. Sure. Yeah. And Castle Hagar, I follow them on I believe it's Instagram or Facebook. I know I see their stuff all the time. On that, related to that, again, we don't have the destructive force of an actual hurricane wreaking havoc on the Baja Peninsula, but we have, we're talking right now, you know, the end of July here, we're Friday, July 24th is when we're recording this. Holy Toledo, we're talking coronavirus. And so that must be having a major effect. I know it's major effect on tourism all over the world,

but you're going ahead with your East Cape tournament, correct? We are going ahead with East Cape, and it's August 4th. I go down on the 31st, which is what a little, just a shade over a week away. And as I'm talking to you on this, I've got the Zoom box on the left side of the screen, the right side of my screen. When we hang up, I'm going to be editing. the what we're able to do at the tournament functions where they'll allow us to do the tournaments yet the social distancing and etc all of their requirements we're going back and forth with the

government now of how about if we do this way how about if they're saying how about if you do that and we're creating i mean it's going to be a little bit of a different format because of this hopefully by October you know lord willing it'll be it'll be better and more back to normal i sure hope so but for this tournament yeah we're I mean I'm editing that and sending it back to the governor you know once right when we hang up with how how does this sound for you know awards banquets or for you know captains meetings and all of that but yes it's gonna you know I mean we're going ahead they're treating us right and they want us there we want to be there and our anglers do Lord knows we surveyed our anglers guys should we cancel and they said no way and so we're

going full steam ahead and you know I'm just now trying to craft exactly what's going to take place on site. Well, let's talk about that because we've got another five minutes here. I'd love to hear a little bit about that East Cape tournament because that's really supposed to be the sort of laid back more old school old style tournament. Tell us a little bit about that. The East Cape, the best way to describe the East Cape tournament is it's the Cabo tournament 25 years ago. And East Cape is just a Los Burles,

is the town that's there and it's a bay that's slung with five or six low slung hotels in a hold hacienda style and It's it's a much more relaxed less traveled no big tourism pressure area It's got great fishing right out in front of it which is nice and the event itself a lot of our guys that have been with us a long time Those are the ones that they consider it actually their favorite because it's less pressure everybody's just there to catch fish and have a great time. And if they win some money, awesome, you know, the prize money is growing on that one. So it may change the dynamic as it hits over a million dollars here.

If not that, well, this corona may keep us from that. But it's going to hit the million dollar plus range very quickly. And hopefully won't change the dynamic because from our side, it's like it used to be. Registrations more relaxed to the just the whole ambiance is come on in, have a beer afterwards and tell us about your fishing day where we just don't get time to interact with a thousand anglers in Cabo in October with all that's going on. You know, we can't interact personally as much with our anglers because of the chaos. And this one we can. And it's nice.

You know, I mean, it's a fun. I like it. It's a fun tournament. And can you take me through the difference in the species and your personal feelings about Dorado versus Tuna versus Marlin? and how you, A, like to, how you like to catch those fish, those various species, how they differ in their fight and, you know, on what your personal favorites are. Yeah, personally, you know, nowadays, the last probably decade of, you haven't fished in years. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I haven't. No, I haven't as much as somebody might have.

I love to golf. I hate fishing. But I like the Dorado and tuna fish personally. It's more active. From the billfish side, I really enjoy, and that's really what I do now. Probably if I'm out bill fishing, is to catch somebody their first fish. You know, that's what we do on our boat every time if we're out catching, you know, Marlin. It's to catch somebody who's with us their first Marlin.

So that is absolutely from a billfish, my favorite bill fishing at the moment. I mean, I still am trying to find my grander like a lot of people are. I still want it and haven't found them yet. but I will. But from a personal standpoint, if I jump on the boat fired up, I'm out to chase tuna and Dorado to fill my coolers up because it's more active throughout the day. You know, you're, you know, if you catch one Dorado, there's four more right there with them you're trying to get. And tuna, of course, in the big schools they run. And so I like to fill the coolers up and bring them back and have the big barbecue. And from a fight standpoint, how would you describe the

three? Gerato are all over the place fun as heck. You know, you use Lightline to make it more of a challenge. Tuna, all you want's your big tuna and then the minute you're hooked up into them, you try to figure out why you wanted that big tuna because they will absolutely tear you up. From a Marlin standpoint, it's kind of the same thing. Sometimes you wait all day for one bite and you get that bite. You're excited as hell for the first 10 minutes and then you realize physically what it's going to do to you for the next hour or two. So it's kind of funny how that all works.

I'm going to poke fun at my own experience here. I went out, I believe it was Marlin fishing once in Hawaii, and I believe on the big island. And when I had to reel in that first bait fish that we caught, which was what, a five-pounder or something, that thing wore me out. I'm not kidding. I was fighting this little bait fish.

And I thought, well, how am I ever going to catch a flipping Marlin when this thing's wearing me out? It's work. I tell you, I've had my butt kicked. Marlin wise, I've had my butt kicked worse by my worst toughest fish have been 200-pound fish. You know, I've got a half a dozen fish in the 500-plus range. And hell, three of them were in a tournament in St. Thomas, and all three of them were less than five minutes a piece. Of course, I had a hell of a crew with me.

But, you know, so, yep, you never know what to expect. Fish are like people. Some are short and fat, some are tall and thin, and some are mean, some are nice. Some are prize fighters and some are not. Hey, Jordan, take us out on a positive note here. Tell us a little bit about the future for Bisbee and take us out on a positive note. No pressure. Well, I mean, yeah, no pressure.

I thought dad was definitely going to wrap up. No, like I said, we're excited to kind of end out this year with everything going on. It is crazy, but we're excited to kind of move forward with the tournaments. And it's always nice to kind of interact with the anglers and get. get everyone down there, get down to Baja, get down to Cabo, a little bit of normalcy, catch some fish, have some fun. And we're just kind of excited for the years to come, how we can just kind of keep growing it and get people down there. Like I said, if you if you haven't done BISB, you need to come down. This is our open invite to you, Michael.

So come on down, check it out for yourself. But no, we're really excited. And if any of your listeners, you know, want a little bit more information for the black and blue tournaments, you can go to bizvise.com. If you wanted to kind of check out some more of our projects, as far as the scholarship program and the I-Tag program that we talked about, our websites, bizvis conservation fund.org. And I'm happy to answer any questions or, you know, anything that people might have.

But we're excited and, you know, we'll hopefully see everyone in a couple weeks for East Cape and then down for the 40th in October. All right. Well, you've answered the next question, which I had, which was where are the best places for people to find you online? So bizbys.com and the Bisbee Conservation Fund.org. So thank you for making some time for Slow Baja.

And I do hope that sometime in my future, I'm going to be podcasting live from Bisbee's. So we'll look forward to that someday. Thank you for having us on. It's my pleasure. Thanks again. Appreciate it. Great talking to you.

All righty. Take care. Thank you. Hey, you guys know what to do. please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes,

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