Magic tricks often feature objects disappearing only to be revealed later to surprise of the audience. A slight angling twist of this act occurred on the sport’s biggest stage Friday during the 45th annual Bisbee’s Black & Blue Jackpot Tournament. The audience—and one very interested party—was definitely surprised.
Magic Touch, a 54 Bertram based in Cabo San Lucas, pulled two extra pounds out of a hat to vault into first place on the last day of competition. Ronald Weisfeld, with an early assist from Ken Eberle, whipped a 459-pound blue marlin to take the lead. Team mate Harry Esterley started the scoring with a 344-pound blue on Day Two. Capt. Kim Manning is the Magic Touch skipper. This marks his 22nd year competing in the Black & Blue and his second as the winner. He also won in 2019.
“We fished all three days in the Sea of Cortez,” Manning said. “We troll lures. We’ve given it a try, but live baiting is so boring for us. I’ve been fishing lures for 35 years, so that’s what I know best.”
Magic Touch was pulling a couple swimming plungers along with smaller cup-face lures off four rods, two long and two short. The preferred colors are green/yellow and purple/silver off Shimano 130s with 130-pound test monofilament line. The team was working just offshore of sea mounts as they waited for a bite. The one Friday was the first fish of the day, a little after 9 am.
“We marked good shows of bait between 75 and 200 feet down in the mornings. By the afternoon, it would dry up. We caught both our keeper fish early,” Manning explained.
“The fish today ate a plunger off the right short and we fought it for about 55 minutes from the chair. It went crazy on the bite, then sounded before a couple more short runs. We got two good gaffs in the fish and it came easily into the boat.
“It was kind of odd-shaped. It had a good size head and shoulders but was skinny in the tail. We were all hoping it would hit 500 pounds. It was unusual to judge from the shape, but it was good enough by two pounds,“ Manning added. “Tonight we’re going to drink a cold beer, have a snack and go to bed and not set an alarm for 4:45 am. And when we wake up, we’ll have all this great event to soak in.”
The most interested party to witness Magic Touch’s weigh-in was Team Rising Sons/Magnifico. Angler Jaselyn Berthelot and her crew were atop the leaderboard with a 457-pound entry going into Friday’s action. They will now have to settle for second-place, albeit with a hefty consolation prize.
Friday’s bite overall was steady with multiple releases throughout the fleet of 177 boats. A couple other blue marlin were also weighed yet failed to meet the 300-pound minimum.
In the end, it was Magic Touch as the marquee act, accented by the applause of thousands. Voila! Two pounds for the win.
