DAY 9 RECAP — 2026 Montauk Canyon Challenge: A Bigeye Blitz Closes the Week as Freedom Holds the Stringer Crown
The 2026 Montauk Canyon Challenge closed its Captain’s Choice week the way it ran all along — with the fleet stacked over the canyon edges and the scales working overtime. Saturday was a bigeye blitz, boats running up and down the deep water off Montauk sent a wall of heavy tuna across the dock, and a handful of category races that had stayed open all week finally settled on the final day.
The heaviest fish of the day belonged to Blondie, whose 173.4-pound bigeye topped a stacked board that also included a 164.6 and a 143.4 for a full stringer’s worth of tuna. She had plenty of company north of 150: Mack Attack weighed a 167.4 and a 152.2, RYFLY answered with a 167.2, Horse Power put up a 156.8 for angler Rohan Keogh, The Experience tallied a 155.4, and Time Out rounded out the 150-plus club with a 153.6. Yellowfin ran thick behind them, most of the fleet weighing fish in the 55-to-70-pound range, with Kaos topping the yellowfin ledger for the day at an even 80.
Two boats used the final day to grab hardware in the specialty categories. Rainbow Runner boated a 75.2-pound bluefin that jumped to the top of the heaviest-bluefin standings, and More Time put together the day’s most complete card — a 78.2-pound swordfish that claimed the swordfish crown, a brace of bigeyes to 146.8, and a blue marlin release that pushed the boat to the front of the Billfish Points race at 150.
Heading into Saturday night’s awards, Freedom still owned the marquee category, its 470.5-pound MCC Stringer (two bigeyes and a yellowfin) standing atop the overall board it has led since midweek. The tournament’s heaviest tuna remained the 210-pound bigeye weighed on the big Day-5 explosion, Alexa Ann held the heaviest-yellowfin mark at 103.6, and Click Bait kept its grip on both the wahoo (17.2) and mahi-mahi (28.6) categories.
With lines out for the last time, the fleet turned for Gosman’s Dock and the awards ceremony to close out the week. All standings are unofficial pending final certification by tournament organizers; Science of Fishing will follow with a full final recap once the results are made official.
