Ah, the middle of a long weekend. What could be nicer than to have two days off and still have two more days to look forward to? Obviously not a luxury enjoyed by everyone but there are enough who are taking full advantage of this circumstance. Not only can you have enjoyed the game, partied long and hard but you can still work in a fishing trip and have enough time left to contemplate golf or some other avocation. Sweet!It is high summer but, before you know it, and you won't want to, it will be all over and winter will be tuning up. In the meantime, the tropical weather watches will become a more significant part of our lives, having serious ramifications for our lifestyle and the safety of our boats.This past weekend was the swansong of the high flying billfish season. Not that the billfish have any say in this business, but there will now be significantly less marlin fishing effort as the foreign fleet leaves the Island for other events elsewhere.The 38th Sea Horse Anglers Tournament made for a scatter action finish to the Triple Crown. A serious flurry of activity on the final day had the lead change several times with the final results of the Sea Horse event altering the Triple Crown standings. As suspected, everything went down to the wire.When the dust had cleared, the boat winning the Sea Horse tournament was Capt. Elliott Cline's Fish On with a total of six blue marlin releases (3,000 points), three of which came on the final day of the event. These efforts also won the first and third day release jackpots and the overall release jackpot, accumulating a fair chunk of change. Their main angler Robert Kathary picked up the High Point Angler award as well for his three blue marlin releases.Second place went to Overbudget with 2,000 points (four blue marlin releases) ahead on time of Georgie Girl which amassed 2,000 points the hard way: two blue marlin and five white marlin releases!Even though a fish was weighed in on day three by Rameseas, it failed to surpass Queen of Hearts' 560 pound blue leaving that fish to win all three daily jackpots and the overall fish jackpot, making for a rather lucrative payday.Not to be totally ignored, Click Through remained on the board with the Game Fish award going to her 64-pound wahoo.The bumper haul by Fish On on the ultimate day, propelled them into the winner's circle for the Triple Crown. Amassing 4,000 points from eight blue marlin releases kept Capt. Cline's boat ahead of the two boats in hot pursuit, Uno Mas and Georgie Girl, both on 3,700 points. Considering the close finishes in each of the individual events, this overall outcome only supports the notion that this may well be the most competitive billfish series in the world. Best of all, a single bad event for a boat does not completely eliminate your chances for a good finish. An excellent result from a really great series of events.The total billfish count in the Sea Horse tournament was 42: 34 blue marlin and a more seasonable eight white marlin. Those desiring to compare this event with other international billfish events will quickly work out that 0.61 is the average number of fish per boat per day.By way of putting this in perspective, last year's Virgin Island's “Boy Scout” tournament had an index of 0.86. While this is significantly higher than the Sea Horse index, there are a couple of other things to bear in mind. One, the Boy Scout is considerably larger with around 40 boats taking part. It is also a four day tournament, and; this could go either way, white marlin are seldom caught along the North Drop where the blue marlin is the dominant species. This could simply mean that there are more blue marlin there because they have taken up the slack left by the absent whites or maybe are there are just blue marlin because there is something about that particular stretch of bottom that draws them there. Of course, the apparent numbers of blue marlin may have less to do with the actual number present and more to do with their activity level because, even here, we really have no idea of how many marlin there are out there. We only get to count the fish we see and sometimes they appear to be scarce only to be everywhere the next day. It is unlikely that they suddenly arrived overnight.Something else that needs to be factored into the equation is the quality of the fish. Virtually every summer, the billfish tournaments see a number of fish brought to the dockside weigh-in. And this is with a 500 pound minimum weight. The much-vaunted Boy Scout tournament started off with a 400-pound minimum weight and only allows points to be scored from fish that are boated and which qualify as potential IGFA world records. Given that the tournament is restricted to 50-lb test line; it is not so surprising that a fish has not been landed in 25 years. Good for conservation but suggestive that either the fish are not all that big or that many of them take advantage of the relatively light line, breaking it or dumping the reel. There is no doubt that Bermuda harbours some really large fish and even though none were landed this month, there are enough reports of fish raised or hooked to leave the fleet in no doubt that there is at least one real trophy fish out there.Leaving billfish for now, another nice catch that came to the Barr's Bay weigh station even though it was in no way part of the billfish tournament was the 151 pound amberjack that had been caught on board Capt. Kevin Winter's Playmate.Part of what made the catch remarkable was the fact that it was made on 30-lb test line. Bermuda has been well known for trophy ambers for many years and until very recently the all-tackle record was held here not just once, but twice concurrently with a tie. Recently, the record was broken by an Asian amber but it would not be outrageous for the record to find its way back to Bermuda at some point in the future. There are plenty of big amberjack in local waters but, for some reason, there is little concentrated effort to try and catch them. Given the abundance of potential live bait, this might just be a good time to fish the deep reef areas in search of a good pull. With the over-indulging that a holiday weekend can bring, maybe just what you need is a dose of Tight lines!!!