The Blue Marlin Grand Championship debuted July 2012 at The Wharf in Orange Beach, Alabama, and quickly became one of those must-fish events on the highly competitive Gulf of Mexico tournament circuit. Today, it’s perhaps best known for the weigh-ins, complete with jumbotron monitors and fire-breathing marlin sculptures. That first year, Art Favre’s A Work of Art team won the inaugural event with Kevin Courville in the chair for the first-place blue marlin, which weighed 665.4 pounds. Eleven years later to the exact day, Courville found himself in familiar territory, once again hooked up to a potential tournament winner.
This year, 57 teams entered to compete for