The Virginia Beach-based Canyon Express crew, including Brett Jamison, above, brought in an 84-pound white marlin on the first day of the tournament. KEVIN DIETSCH / SALISBURY DAILY TIMES

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Greg Span fidgeted with the cell phone in his pocket. Every few minutes, he turned from the person he was talking to and stared in the direction of the marina’s mouth. No boats. With a drink in his hand and an armful of new friends at his shoulder, Brett Jamison laughed in the midst of a party in the cockpit of a docked fishing boat. He also took time to glance down the waterway. Still, no boats.
“You have no idea how my stomach feels right now,” said Jamison, shaking his head and trying his best to stay calm late Friday afternoon. Span and the rest of the crew on the Virginia Beach-based Canyon Express should have been accustomed to such tension. They had been sitting on some serious fishing tournament prize money since Monday. Waiting at weigh-ins had been a nightly function.
On the first day of the 31st annual White Marlin Open, they had brought in the biggest white marlin that the tournament had seen in nearly 15 years.
The 84-pounder was worth more than its weight in gold.
Unless, that is, some other team brought in a late challenger.
Jamison and Span – along with teammates Buzzy Evans, Brock Beasley, Allen Owen, Matt Gunter and Steve McCann – held their collective breath as a hulking charter boat slipped inside the inlet.

White marlin flags, three of them, flew from outriggers.
Jamison gulped, finding it hard to swallow. Owen grabbed his wife, Paula. The others simply stared at the boat.
But the flags flew upside down, signaling that the fish had been released.
Still, there was time left before the 9:15 p.m. cutoff for weigh-ins.
The Canyon Express crew mingled with partiers and about 3,000 spectators as Caribbean music pumped from the dock’s loudspeakers. They tried to ignore their watches and the butterflies in the stomachs. Each second took longer than the one before.
Finally, the weigh master counted down.
“That’s it,” he shouted, calling the scales officially closed.
The Canyon Express had won the White Marlin Open and billfishing’s biggest payoff – $1.3 million – plus several thousand in change that would be added on after official results had been tallied. Span’s cell phone rang, then Jamison’s and two others. There were hugs and high fives aplenty.
Then it was back to the party.
The White Marlin Open dishes out the largest paycheck of any billfish tournament in the world. But other events are rapidly catching up.
The Bisbee’s Black and Blue in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, paid out nearly $1.2 million last year. Other billfish tournaments along the East Coast have top prizes of several hundred thousand dollars.
So how did fishing tournaments grow into such big money-makers?
There always has been decent money in these events. But any big payouts – nothing like those of today – were kept under the cuff. Known as Calcuttas, each team in an event had the option of putting money into a pool, with the winner taking home the cash – sometimes tucked under his arm in a brown paper bag.
Things are on the up-and-up now. Teams competing in cash prize tournaments are issued Internal Revenue Service identification numbers. Uncle Sam pockets 35 percent to 40 percent of all earnings.
“We stopped doing the brown bag thing back in 1980, and everything is legit … and we’re still in business,” said Jim Motsko, tournament director for the White Marlin Open. “Tournaments have to be completely legitimate operations. We deal with the feds. The IRS gets their money. The state gets theirs.”
In large billfish tournaments, teams start out by paying a standard entry fee - from several hundred dollars to several thousand. To have a chance of winning more money, teams can enter a rising scale of advanced entry levels, each with a higher price tag.
The highest level of freshwater fishing – the FLW Tour and the Bassmaster Classic – feature one entry fee and cash awards fronted by national sponsors.
For a chance to win the $1.3 million in the White Marlin Open, the Canyon Express team had to pay $10,000. The overall prize grows with the number of teams that enter all levels.
And growing cash prizes mean more entries.
“We’ve had steady growth each year,” Motsko said. “It’s grown in the number of boats and in the added entry levels. We’ve added more entry levels over the years as well.
“And a $1.3 million prize draws a lot of interest.”
The White Marlin Open attracted 376 entries this year, down slightly from last year because of Hurricane Alex. More boats would have meant more money for Team Canyon Express. Milton Sykes of Virginia Beach, fishing on the Victory Lap, came in third place and won $71,000.
The Canyon Express crew knew they had gold Monday, the first day of the tournament.
The action had been slow until 11:30 in the morning, when a white marlin crashed into a bait – a pink squid chain – on the boat’s left side. The action was brief, however, as the fish struck twice and left the bait spread. Minutes later, another white crashed into the bait on the opposite side. Again, the fish didn’t take a bait.
By then Jamison had tossed a split-billed ballyhoo about 15 feet behind the boat. Suddenly, a large white marlin smashed the bait from the side and took off on a run away from the boat.
Jamison waited a few seconds and tightened the drag on his reel.
Nearly 45 minutes later, the 73.5-inch-long white marlin was in the boat.
“It had big shoulders, and we didn’t think of anything other than putting that fish in the boat and heading to the scales,” Jamison said. “We thought it would go about 75 pounds, which is good for this tournament, especially in the first day. When it was 9 pounds bigger at the scales, we freaked out. We all just exploded. Eighty-four pounds. That was the sixth biggest fish in the history of the tournament and the biggest in like 15 years.”
Team Canyon Express didn’t fish Tuesday or Wednesday and returned to the water Thursday. Conditions were rough. The team caught a small white marlin and a 236½-pound mako shark that put the team in first place in the shark division. Another $6,500 wouldn’t hurt.
The shark didn’t hold up; a 300-plus pound hammerhead was weighed in on the final day.
“Oh well,” said Span, who celebrated his third tournament victory in as many tries. “There goes the beer money.” Reach Lee Tolliver at 222-5844 or lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com