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Beachcomber Team Releases Two Blues for 2003 Win.
KEY WEST - A winner of a past Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest and a Tampa teenager teamed to win the Drambuie Key West Marlin Tournament that concluded Saturday.
Rick Kirvan, a local bartender who won the "Papa" Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in 1999, released a blue marlin Friday, while Mattt Palombo, 16, caught his marlin Thursday, the beginning of the three-day contest that coincides with the island's annual Hemingway Days festival.
They fished with Key West captain Daryl Simeon aboard the 33-foot Beachcomber. Their victory earned them $25,000 in the tournament that drew 84 boats during the festival, a tribute to the late Nobel Prize-winning author who lived on the island throughout the 1930s.
Simeon, a light tackle guide who usually fishes with live bait, trolled high speed lures for the victory. "I don’t particularly care for trolling -- it’s like watching paint dry," he said. "But it’s basically the way you have to do it in this tournament. Everybody that was live-baiting didn’t catch anything."
His method proved successful for Palombo, who caught a 150-pounder on the first day of fishing after a 45-minute fight, despite having little experience fishing offshore.
"Every time I got the fish close to the boat, it kept running back out and diving," the teen said. For Kirvan, who serves as president of the Hemingway Look-Alike Society, the tussle with his fish only lasted 40 minutes -- far less than the epic battle that Ernest Hemingway wrote about in his classic "The Old Man and the Sea."
"He (the marlin) just came up and crashed the bait, and I picked up the rod and hooked him," said Kirvan. "My estimate of his size was between 700 and 800 pounds, but the crew in the boat estimated it at 125 pounds."
Second place in the tournament was taken by Game Hunter, skippered by Alex Alder of Naples, Fla., with anglers Brian Baugher of Captiva, Fla., Chris Claypool and Anthony Delduca of Naples.
Get Lit captured third place with one blue marlin, caught under the guidance of Capt. Ray Rosher of Miami with Miami anglers Christopher Toomey and Peter Miller.
