GULF

DAY 1 RECAP — Bay Point Billfish Open: 86 Boats Fire Off Shotgun Start With Blackout Boards at the Scale

June 25, 2026

GulfSFC

Science of Fishing Editorial

86 boats compete in the 2026 Bay Point Billfish Open with a nearly two million dollar purse on Thursday June 25 - photo by WJHG

This is the Day 1 recap from the 2026 Bay Point Billfish Open in Panama City Beach, Florida, where the fleet of 86 boats fired off the ceremonial shotgun start Thursday morning and pushed offshore for the first of three fishing days.

Boat Parade, Shotgun Start, and Blackout Boards

The 2026 Bay Point Billfish Open officially got underway Thursday, June 25, out of Point South Marina at Bay Point in Panama City Beach. The day began with a 9:00 a.m. boat parade out through the pass, followed by a ceremonial shotgun start at 10:00 a.m. off the county pier — the tournament's traditional flare launch that formally opens the two-day-plus-Saturday fishing window.

Sport Fishing Championship, the sanctioning body for the Gulf Division points chase running inside this event, brought its studio on the road for the week and set up dockside at Bay Point. All six SFC Gulf Division angling clubs — Third Coast Renegades, Mississippi Blues, Gulf Coast Cowboys, Texas Lone Stars, West Florida Black Flags, and Louisiana Canyons — were on the water at launch, with Bay Point marking the third of six Gulf Division regular-season stops on the 2026 calendar.

Aerial view of Point South Marina during the Bay Point Billfish Open — sportfish fleet docked with a big-crowd atmosphere around the tournament weigh-in stage, from Sport Fishing Championship's official Bay Point event coverage — Aerial view of Point South Marina during the Bay Point Billfish Open — the sportfish fleet moored around the tournament weigh-in stage with the traditional big-crowd atmosphere that the fleet returns to each evening. Photo: Sport Fishing Championship.

Conditions and the Release Bite

Thursday brought light winds and workable seas — the kind of Gulf morning captains want on Day 1 of a three-day event with catch-and-release scoring built in. The fleet pushed out to the deeper edges of the shelf, and release reports began trickling in over the radio as the morning wore on. The public-facing scoring portal for the tournament sat dark for much of Thursday's session, so intermediate release counts on Day 1 were only loosely tracked from boat-to-boat chatter rather than from a real-time leaderboard — a pattern that would repeat itself through Friday before the numbers were finally consolidated at the scales on Saturday.

Notable on the water for the Pratt family program aboard It Just Takes Time, the Orange Beach–based team that would ultimately claim the release crown by the end of the tournament: team owner Nick Pratt told WJHG later in the week that his children, Leah and George Pratt, "take care of the angling now, reeling in all the fish." Both Pratt kids would go on to lock down Top Lady Angler and Top Junior Angler honors respectively at Saturday night's awards ceremony.

Bay Point Billfish Open 2026 organizer event announcement image ahead of the June 23-28 tournament week at Point South Marina — The Bay Point Billfish Open organizer's own promo image for the fourth annual return of the tournament — the event that drew Nick Pratt's Orange Beach–based It Just Takes Time program and 85 other crews to Point South Marina for the week's release chase. Photo: Bay Point Billfish Open (Facebook).

Scale Stays Quiet

The evening weigh-in windows opened at Bay Point but the boards stayed quiet: no blue marlin, tuna, or other qualifying gamefish crossed the official scale on Thursday. In a tournament where catch-and-release billfish scoring drives the release leaderboard and the heaviest-billfish jackpot rewards the single biggest blue of the week, that combination is not unusual on Day 1 — teams tend to release first, save the weigh-in fish for the closing session.

Where Day 1 Leaves the Fleet

With no live scoring portal to lean on, the Thursday evening standings picture at Bay Point stayed cumulative-first, day-by-day-later. Per the Reeltime cumulative-leads-daily pattern we cover across every SFC event, the tournament-live cumulative figures ran ahead of the day-specific reconciliations at Bay Point — and by Saturday night the release leaderboard would settle out with It Just Takes Time on top of the catch-and-release division and the SFC Gulf Division race locked in with Third Coast Renegades leading the placement-points chase.

Tournament director Bert Merritt summed up the event's draw to WJHG earlier in the week: "People love a blue marlin. People come from everywhere for a blue marlin."

Bay Point Billfish Open 2026 shotgun start and beach parade takeoff, June 25, 2026 — Instagram post by @baypointbillfishopen — The Bay Point Billfish Open organizer's own look-back at the 2026 shotgun-start beach parade and takeoff — the 86-boat fleet running through Point South Marina to open the tournament week. Photo: @baypointbillfishopen via Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/baypointbillfishopen/p/DaLeB2dkTLg/).

Day 1 quick-look

Fleet: 86 boats.
Purse: approximately $1.8 million tournament-wide.
Start: Boat parade 9:00 a.m., ceremonial shotgun start 10:00 a.m. off the county pier.
Conditions: light winds, workable seas.
Scale: no billfish or qualifying gamefish weighed Thursday.
SFC Gulf Division clubs on the water: Third Coast Renegades, Mississippi Blues, Gulf Coast Cowboys, Texas Lone Stars, West Florida Black Flags, Louisiana Canyons.