First blue marlin off the board at ECBC

Published: Jun. 24, 2022 at 11:25 PM CDT

SANDESTIN, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - Day one of the ECBC weigh-ins has produced one big fish.

An angler by the name of Troy Layton of Huntsville Alabama caught the first one.

Troy is fishing aboard the boat Sea Wolff, which is based in Destin with captain Jared Quick at the helm.

Now get this, the blue weighed 503.7 pounds, so this fish obviously placed first on the board.

Right now, it’s worth more than $270,000 to Troy and the crew of Sea Wolff, if it can hold on to first place.

Shortly after they weighed this fish, the angler had this to say.

“It was a couple of hours we hooked him up about 9 o’clock this morning. Caught em almost 150 miles offshore, weather was smooth, calm, and a little hot, and it was good,” Layton said.

When asked about the fight to get the fish, “the fight was about a couple of hours of just fighting. It was rough,” Layton said.

For someone who’s never experienced that before, physically, emotionally, mentally. How demanding is it?

“It’s pretty demanding. The catching makes it easier. He can make it easy or difficult. Ours made it easier, but yeah it was a great fight,” Layton said.

The weigh-in scale opens back up at 4 on Saturday.

84 teams are still competing for a prize purse of $1.9 million dollars.

For more information on the tournament, visit the ECBC website.

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