About The Hawaii Marlin Tournament Series

At the Hawaii Marlin Tournament Series, we believe that honesty and integrity start with the tournament organization, and that everything the organization does and says must be honest and truthful. Big Game tournaments operate to a great degree upon the honor system. If the operators of the tournament and the messages we issue are not 100% true and accurate, how could we judge tournaments worth Millions of Dollars?

We don’t make false claims or fill the air with hyperbole, we put it in black and white, stick with the truth and then we let our 28 year long track record speak for itself as we move on down the line.

Just visit our “official” web site www.konatournaments.com and form your own opinion. Almost none of what we do now, was being done prior to our establishment way back in 1986, and now much of it is taken for granted as “the norm” today.

Conservation, research, philanthropy – it’s all there – including tournament formats that have stood the test of time, some after many said “you can’t do that” or were called too cutting edge. Those that didn’t make it are gone. Not all of them worked.

The professional skippers and crewmen of the Kona fleet, and many, many anglers and boat owners have all been instrumental in maintaining the dignity of our events, and the reputation of our home – Kona – and our place in the world. Tournaments do not exist in a vacuum. The participants make them happen, and ours are great.

Before us were the true innovators, the guys who first figured out how the marlin and the marlin fishery works, and invented techniques that are now employed globally.

Even though ours are some of the most competitive and professional fishing events anywhere – and we manage many millions of dollars in purse – we prefer to operate with a Down Home ambiance, the Spirit of Aloha. This is Hawaii after all, it is not the East Coast, or the Gulf Coast or anywhere else, so we don’t try to be.

Kona fishing can be Kona Style if it wants to be. Big Game Fishing was born here.

Marlin fishing was “perfected” in Kona after being invented by Polynesians. This stuff is about as home grown as is humanly possible. We celebrate that.

Our anglers are usually successful in their fields, and like to come to fish Kona in part to escape all the BS that they deal with at work, and experience the true Hawaii as Kona offers it. They tell us they like to fish and hang out in shorts and sometimes even (gasp!) bare feet, with real Hawaii people – and, of course – some of the best fishermen on Earth (But our guys would never say that. bragging – or even worse, making false claims – in Hawaii is a capital offense) Most folks here just says things like “yeah, we got lucky”.

And we are lucky, Lucky We Live Hawaii.

And we are lucky that people like our tournaments and keep coming back and making them bigger and better after 28 years, and to you we say Mahalo!

In return for your trust, we pledge to maintain the integrity of our events and our sport – and – we pledge to spell correctly, because if you put something out there and don’t take the time to spell it correctly then, what else might be wrong? It all has to be right, even if it is casual.

Aloha!