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Bimini Twist Library, 2998 S Federal Highway, Delray Beach, FL (2026)

09/07/2026

A WEEK ON AFRICA’S WILD COAST
From the fishing memories of Capt. Brad Phillips
Most fishermen have had one of those trips where everything that can possibly go wrong seems determined to do exactly that. World-renowned big-game captain Brad Phillips had one in December 1991 on South Africa’s legendary Wild Coast. More than three decades later, it remains one of those fishing stories that almost defies belief.
Brad had grown up fishing with his Uncle Julie and Aunty Ros aboard Jay-D, competing out of the Cintsa Ski-Boat Club. This particular week began innocently enough, with eight-year-old Michael catching a 6.4-kilogram geelbek, nearly as long as he was.
Getting it to the weigh-in became the first adventure. Their ancient 1940 Massey Harris beach-launch tractor refused to cooperate. With the deadline approaching, the crew stripped the carburetor, repaired it on the beach and reached the scales with only minutes to spare. That should have been enough excitement for one tournament. It wasn't even close.
A few days later, Julie's daughter Liesl joined them for a short fishing trip, slipped during the launch and cut her foot badly enough to require stitches. While Aunty Ros was driving her to the doctor, a surfboard flew from another vehicle directly toward their windshield. It bounced at the last instant, narrowly missing them.
The following morning another crew member took Julie's nearly new Lada 4x4 up the beach to collect mussels. He managed to put it into the Kwenxura River. Not beside the river. In it.
The water went over the bonnet while the children climbed onto the roof rack. After the vehicle was pulled out, fish reportedly came pouring through the doors with the water. The crew spent what should have been tournament-preparation day stripping the Lada, draining fluids, flushing the engine and trying to bring it back to life. They succeeded. Surely, they thought, their run of bad luck was over. Then came Monday.
Jay-D headed about 15 miles offshore into the powerful Agulhas Current. The crew located an underwater pinnacle rising from roughly 243 feet to just 83 feet and prepared to anchor in extremely rough seas. Suddenly several enormous waves broke across the bow. The forward deck filled with water. The boat began to dive. Drain tunnels beneath the cabin were blocked, preventing the tremendous volume of water from escaping. With the bow down and the boat listing badly, the crew realized they were in serious trouble.
Life jackets and fishing gear were floating around the boat. One frightened crew member cried out that he didn't want to drown. Julie remained at the controls.
He turned hard and opened the throttles, trying to get Jay-D around and into a following sea so the water could escape. At one point an outboard was submerged and the engines were virtually underwater.
Slowly, the boat responded. Then they discovered what had helped cause the problem. Clothing had blocked the drain tunnels. Whole squid had clogged the forward hatch drains. Once the obstructions were removed, the water finally began pouring out. A sealed hatch containing about 105 cubic feet of trapped air had provided enough buoyancy to help keep Jay-D afloat. They had very nearly lost the boat.
Most fishermen would have headed directly for shore. These guys went back to fishing. And promptly wrapped the anchor rope around an outboard propeller. Twenty-year-old Clint climbed onto the motor with a knife while Brad held him as waves crashed over them. Another crew member eventually went overboard to finish freeing the propeller. The crew sacrificed the anchor, chain and rope.
Then Julie accidentally dropped a Daiwa reel overboard. At that point, an Arctic tern appeared, circled the boat and landed on Clint's head. They decided it had to be a sign that their luck was finally changing.
Eventually Jay-D made it back to the beach. The exhausted crew hauled her out and opened a few beers, well aware that the day's outcome could have been very different. Brad remembers the conclusion reached by the crew: “Africa is not a place for sissies.”
The Wild Coast certainly lived up to its name that week. And after the disabled tractor, stitches, flying surfboard, drowned Lada, nearly sunken boat, fouled propeller, lost anchor and drowned fishing reel, there was one final punch line. The following morning Brad and Julie drove to get fuel. After stopping to tell the Club Commodore the whole incredible story, they pulled away... and ran out of gas.
Yet somehow, when the tournament was finished, Jay-D and her crew had placed second overall. Brad Phillips was named Top Angler and took Heaviest Fish. Julie and Peter Smith also caught previously tagged fish, including one Julie himself had tagged the year before.
Brad would go on to become one of the best-known big-game captains in the world, but some of the lessons that helped make him that captain were learned much earlier, aboard Jay-D in the unforgiving waters of Southern Africa.
Fishing has a way of providing an education that can't be found in any classroom. Sometimes you learn about fish. Sometimes you learn about boats. And every once in a while, you learn just how thin the line can be between a great fishing story and a tragedy. Fortunately, this one became a great fishing story.
— Bimini Twist Library
Adapted from the recollections of Capt. Brad Phillips.

09/02/2026

THE ORDER

Five years after leaving office, former Secretary of Defense Caleb Mercer steps off an international flight expecting a car, a meeting, and dinner. Instead, federal marshals are waiting.

The warrant comes from a Caribbean nation accusing Mercer of responsibility for a secret military campaign that killed hundreds at sea. His arrest opens a door Washington thought had been permanently closed.

Soon investigators are following evidence that reaches far beyond Mercer: into the Justice Department, Homeland Security, presidential pardons, international money, political influence, and the family of former President Richard Vale.

One by one, powerful people who once believed themselves untouchable discover that leaving office does not erase what happened there.

The Order is a political thriller about power, loyalty, corruption, and accountability, and about a question that becomes increasingly difficult to answer:

When an order crosses the line, who is responsible: the person who gave it, or the person who obeyed?

Available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+order%2C+mansell&i=stripbooks&crid=180H6YQL238XI&sprefix=the+order%2C+mansell%2Cstripbooks%2C177&ref=nb_sb_noss

08/31/2026

Before Sportfishing History Disappears

Somewhere in somebody’s closet is a box of photographs that may contain a piece of sportfishing history. There may be pictures of a famous captain before anyone knew his name. Photographs from an early tournament. A fishing club newsletter from the 1950s. Letters between anglers. Old films or slides. A logbook from a legendary boat. Tournament programs, scrapbooks, trophies, tackle, correspondence, or records from a marina that disappeared decades ago. To the family that owns them, they may simply be old fishing stuff. To the history of our sport, they may be priceless.

I recently had the opportunity to write an article for the International Game Fish Association about one of the most ambitious projects IGFA has undertaken: the digitization and preservation of sportfishing history. I came away from the project convinced that this is about much more than converting old documents into computer files. It is about saving a history that is disappearing every day.

A Remarkable Collection
The E.K. Harry Library of Fishes at IGFA headquarters in Dania Beach already contains one of the great collections of sportfishing material in the world. Thousands of books share space with photographs, magazines, scientific papers, films, slides, correspondence, tournament records, Hall of Fame files and other historical material.

The collection documents far more than world records. It tells the stories of anglers, captains, scientists, conservationists, boat builders, tackle innovators, fishing clubs and tournaments that helped create modern recreational fishing.

Now IGFA is working to preserve that material digitally and eventually make much of it accessible to researchers, historians, writers, scientists and anglers around the world.

But there is another part of this project that may be even more important. IGFA knows that much of sportfishing history isn’t at IGFA. It is still out there.

Look in the Attic.
Think about the great names and places in fishing that have disappeared during our lifetimes. Captains die. Marinas close. Fishing clubs dissolve. Tournaments disappear. Families clean out homes. Old photographs get thrown away because nobody recognizes the people in them. Boxes of correspondence go into dumpsters. Film deteriorates. Slides fade. And sometimes nobody realizes what has been lost until years later when a researcher starts looking for it.

That is why IGFA is interested in locating important historical material beyond its own walls. This is where the sportfishing community can help. If you have been involved in fishing for 30, 40, 50 years or more, take a look at what you have accumulated. More importantly, think about what your parents, grandparents, fishing partners or old captains may have left behind.

Don't assume nobody would be interested. An unidentified photograph today may become extraordinarily important when somebody recognizes the boat, the captain, the tournament or the angler standing in the background.

A box of old fishing club newsletters may contain the only surviving record of an organization that played an important role in the development of the sport. A captain’s logbook may document a fishery that has changed dramatically. One piece by itself may not seem terribly important. Connected with other pieces, it may help tell a story nobody could tell before.

The Bimini Twist Library Is Participating
This project is particularly meaningful to me because preservation has always been one of the purposes of the Bimini Twist Library. Many of our books record the lives of anglers and captains, the histories of marinas, great catches, fishing destinations and events that otherwise might eventually be forgotten. For that reason, I have agreed to make Bimini Twist Library publications available for inclusion in the IGFA digital archive where appropriate.

I hope other authors, photographers, fishing organizations and people with significant private collections will consider doing the same. You don’t necessarily have to give away treasured family memorabilia. The important first step is letting IGFA know what exists and allowing its people to determine whether it may have historical significance and how it might be preserved.

What Do You Have?
This is one of those rare projects in which almost everyone who has spent a lifetime around fishing may be able to contribute something. Look through the old albums.
Open those boxes. Ask your parents and grandparents what they saved. Talk to the retired captain who has 50 years of photographs in his garage. Ask what happened to the records from the fishing club that closed 20 years ago.

Sportfishing has done a remarkable job of conserving fish. Now IGFA is undertaking something equally important: conserving the memory of the sport itself. If you have photographs, films, correspondence, records, publications, memorabilia or other material that you believe might be historically important, contact the Bryan Beniluos who is spearheading this effort for International Game Fish Association: [email protected] 954-927-2628.

The next great piece of sportfishing history may already be sitting in somebody’s closet. The challenge is finding it before it disappears.

08/27/2026

Pioneers of Daytime Sword Fishing in the Florida Keys

In the time period around 1976-78 boats in the Miami area began catching swordfish on rod and reel at night. This was a very specialized kind of fishing that required glow lights to bring up the bait, and very heavy rigs for terminal tackle. For several years the sword fishery was healthy and attracted plenty of South Florida’s charter captains. And no sooner had it become a viable specie for sport fishermen than the commercial long-liners came in and, in a very few years, nearly decimated the fishery. To add to the misery, they also caught their share of unintended bycatch. The sportfishing community was up in arms. The Billfish Foundation and other conservation-minded groups and individuals launched a full out attack on that industry. They finally got the most effective and destructive kinds of long line equipment banned, and within a few years the swordfish population began to recover.
Vic believed that he probably would never catch a swordfish. The Keys were not well known for that specie, and he rarely placed himself in offshore situations where swordfish were considered a target. But something happened that changed all that. Since the early 1990s Dr. Ruben Jaen, a heart surgeon from Venezuela, and later an IGFA Hall of Fame inductee, had been experimenting with daytime deep dropping for swordfish. He discovered that the swordfish moved deep to the bottom during the day, and usually only came into the shallower depths, 250-450 feet at night to feed. Jaen decided to send his lines down very deep in the daytime to where he believed the swordfish might be; and he was successful.
It sounded a bit crazy to Vic that there was this fishing technique that required dropping ten to fifteen pounds of lead in 1,500 feet of water. But he was intrigued and saw this as a much different kind of experience. By 2003 Jaen’s secret was out and Vic decided he wanted to be part of the development of daytime deep dropping for swordfish. Richard Stanczyk’s enthusiasm matched Vic’s. At first they tried this technique sporadically, but soon enough they became more focused on it. Vic was one of the innovators, along with the Stanczyks, Richard, Nick, and Scott, out of Bud n’ Mary’s Marina in Islamorada as they perfected a technique that had them frequently hitting home runs. Vic was the designated angler for many of these trips and says he believes they caught 200 swordfish before the rest of the fleet discovered it. At one point they caught at least one swordfish on 53 consecutive outings. He describes the fishery as the bottom being “paved with swordfish.” He goes on to add, “If you didn’t get a hit within five minutes, you thought your rig must be tangled up.” The expectations had become that high.
Vic later went on to introduce daytime sword fishing to Randy Morton and David Peck in the waters off Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Oregon Inlet in North Carolina. Their success with that technique caught on like wildfire in that area. From those experiences the area has begun to have daytime swordfish tournaments, and many of the captains in Virginia and North Carolina use lessons learned from Vic and, by extension, the Stanczyks. Since that technique has been discovered and perfected, daytime swordfishing is taking place in other parts of the world including in Australia, New Zealand, and the west coast of the U.S.

This story is from the book Bud n' Mary's Marina, Islamorada, Florida

Father and son, Richard and Nick Stanczyk on a typical sword fishing outing.

08/23/2026

Paxson “P***y” Offield: The Angler Who Put Conservation First
There are people in the history of big-game fishing who are remembered for the fish they caught. Paxson “P***y” Offield deserves to be remembered for something considerably larger: what he did to make sure those fish, and many other species, would still be there for generations to come.
Offield was an accomplished big-game angler, a member of the legendary Tuna Club of Santa Catalina Island, an International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame inductee, and a leader of some of the most important conservation organizations in the world of recreational fishing. But his interests in conservation reached far beyond the ocean.
The great-grandson of William Wrigley Jr., Offield had deep family ties to Santa Catalina Island. He joined the Santa Catalina Island Company in 1976 and over the years served as its Chairman, President and CEO. He was also the first Chairman of the Board of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, continuing a family commitment to protecting much of the island's natural environment. His conservation interests included some remarkable successes.
Offield became involved in research addressing reproductive problems threatening the bald eagle population on Catalina Island. Working with the San Diego Zoological Society, he helped fund efforts to save the California condor when the species was perilously close to extinction.
His work extended internationally as well. As Chairman of The Peregrine Fund, Offield helped efforts to protect Panama’s national bird, the harpy eagle. The President of Panama presented him with the Comendador Award, one of that country’s highest civilian honors. But for anglers, P***y Offield's most enduring legacy may be found beneath the surface of the world’s oceans.
The Paxson Offield Center for Billfish Studies opened in 2000 with an ambitious goal: use science and emerging technology to learn where billfish traveled, how they behaved and what would be required to conserve them. At the time, much about the movements of marlin and other billfish remained a mystery. Offield helped bring scientists and anglers together to change that. Satellite tagging became one of the answers.
Researchers placed electronic tags on billfish that could record information about their movements and behavior. After detaching from the fish and reaching the surface, the tags transmitted information by satellite for scientific analysis.
The program eventually placed hundreds of satellite tags on fish in 16 locations around the world. It produced new information about billfish movements and migrations while helping scientists improve the technology itself.
Offield was also a driving force behind the Great Marlin Race, which brought recreational anglers directly into the research effort. Instead of conservation being something taking place only in laboratories and universities, fishermen themselves could participate in tagging programs that expanded scientific knowledge of the fish they pursued.
That philosophy represented much of what Offield believed about sportfishing. Anglers could enjoy the resource while also accepting responsibility for protecting it. And he practiced those principles himself.
Offield joined the Tuna Club of Santa Catalina Island in 1987. He earned his qualifying button the following year, a Silver Fame Medal in 1990 and a Gold Fame Medal in 1994. He received a Tag and Release Pin in 1997 and was named the club’s Angler of the Year in both 2003 and 2004.
His conservation leadership was equally impressive. Offield served as Chairman of the International Game Fish Association and Chairman and Director of The Billfish Foundation. He was associated with the Catalina Sea Bass Fund, the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California, the San Diego Zoological Society’s conservation programs and numerous other environmental organizations.
In 2011, The Billfish Foundation presented him with its Rybovich Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to billfish conservation. That same year, he was inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame.
His conservation philosophy was unusually broad. Protecting a marlin in the Pacific, a white seabass off California, a bald eagle on Catalina Island or a condor struggling for survival were not separate causes. They were parts of the same responsibility to preserve the natural world.
Paxson Offield died on June 14, 2015, from complications of leukemia. He was surrounded by his wife and family at his home in Michigan. He left behind an extraordinary record as a businessman, philanthropist, angler and conservationist. But perhaps his greatest contribution was demonstrating what can happen when fishermen, scientists and conservation organizations work together.
Today satellite tagging is one of the most valuable tools available for understanding highly migratory billfish. Researchers can follow animals across enormous stretches of ocean and learn things earlier generations of anglers could only wonder about. P***y Offield helped make that possible. For those of us who care about big-game fishing, that may be the legacy worth remembering most.

08/20/2026

When a Blue Marlin Tells Us Where It Went

For generations, releasing a blue marlin ended with a mystery. The mate removed the hook or cut the leader, the fish disappeared into the blue, and everyone aboard wondered the same thing: Where will it go? Today, increasingly, we know.

Satellite tagging has changed the study of blue marlin and other highly migratory pelagic species. A fish can now carry a small electronic recorder that follows its life for months, collecting information about where it travels, how deep it dives, the temperatures it encounters and how it uses different parts of the ocean. And some of the journeys have been remarkable.

In June 2025, an estimated 700-pound blue marlin was satellite tagged off Cape Verde as part of the International Game Fish Association’s Great Marlin Race. During the next 181 days, the fish crossed the Atlantic not once, but twice.

Its estimated journey covered 5,639 nautical miles. Perhaps most remarkable of all, when the tag finally released and surfaced, it was only 277 nautical miles from where the marlin had originally been tagged.

Think about that for a moment. A fish traveled thousands of miles across an ocean and back, and we were able to follow the journey.

From Anglers to Scientists
Much of this research is possible because of a partnership that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago. Scientists, conservation organizations, tournament operators, boat owners, captains, crews and recreational anglers are all participating in the research. One of the largest efforts is the IGFA Great Marlin Race, a collaboration between the International Game Fish Association and Stanford University.

From 2011 through 2025, the program deployed 715 satellite tags on billfish around the world. Of those, 378 were placed on blue marlin. The information goes far beyond drawing lines on a map. Satellite tags have helped researchers determine where marlin travel, the depths they use, the temperatures they prefer and how their behavior changes between daylight and darkness. When hundreds of those individual journeys are combined, scientists begin to see migration corridors, habitat preferences and connections between populations thousands of miles apart.

That information becomes particularly important for a fish that recognizes no political boundaries. A blue marlin released in one country’s waters may eventually travel through the waters of several others and spend much of its life on the high seas. Effective conservation therefore cannot be accomplished by one country alone.

The Billfish Foundation
Another major force in this research has been The Billfish Foundation, which has spent four decades bringing anglers and scientists together in the conservation of billfish.

Under longtime president Ellen Peel, TBF has been a strong advocate for using science, rather than speculation, to guide billfish conservation and fisheries policy.
Satellite tagging has become an important part of that work.

Since 2002, the Adopt-A-Billfish program, begun jointly by TBF and NOAA, has helped deploy nearly 300 pop-up satellite archival tags in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. The research has included blue and white marlin, sailfish, swordfish and longbill spearfish. Those tags have produced some surprises.

Billfish once thought of largely as surface or near-surface animals routinely travel much deeper than previously believed. Researchers have documented movements into the mesopelagic zone and patterns in which fish change their depth according to light, temperature and the location of prey.

One TBF blue marlin produced an extraordinary record. In 2023, a satellite tag remained attached for a full 12 months. During that time, the blue marlin traveled more than 27,000 miles and dove to depths exceeding 1,100 feet. That is the kind of information that simply did not exist before satellite tagging.

Forty Years, Forty Tags
This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Billfish Foundation, and TBF is celebrating it in an appropriate way: by attempting to commit 40 satellite tags to billfish research in 2026.

The effort includes several projects around the world, including white marlin off Nantucket, striped marlin in Mexico, sailfish off South Florida and blue and white marlin in the Caribbean and Gulf.

Of particular interest to blue marlin anglers is Project Gulf. Running through the 2026 season, the project brings together captains, crews, scientists, tournaments and sponsors to satellite tag marlin throughout the Gulf. Researchers want to learn more about migration, depth, habitat preferences, spawning areas and seasonal movements.

TBF reported this summer that Project Gulf alone is aiming to deploy more than a dozen satellite tags on blue marlin. These are expensive little pieces of equipment. TBF currently places the cost of sponsoring one of its satellite tags at a minimum of $6,500, including the tag, programming, deployment and retrieval of its data. Much of that funding comes from individuals, companies and members of the sportfishing community.

The Fish Eventually Gives the Tag Back
The technology is ingenious. A pop-up satellite archival tag does not have to be physically recovered from the marlin. It is programmed to remain attached for a predetermined period while recording information.

Eventually it releases from the fish and floats to the surface. Once there, it begins transmitting its stored information through satellites.The marlin keeps swimming.
The scientists get the data. And another small piece of the mystery is solved.

More Than an Interesting Track on a Map
Perhaps that is the most important point. Satellite tagging produces spectacular tracks that anglers enjoy seeing, but this is not being done simply to find out where a particular marlin went.

Scientists can combine the movements of many fish with information about water temperature, oxygen, currents, depth and other environmental conditions. They can begin identifying important feeding and spawning areas and examining how warming oceans may change where billfish live. The information can also help fisheries managers understand where billfish encounter commercial fishing operations and where accidental catches may occur.

In other words, the fish themselves are providing information that may ultimately help us protect them. Catch-and-release fishing changed billfishing because anglers realized that a magnificent fish did not have to be brought back to the dock to have value.

Satellite tagging has taken that philosophy another step. Now, when a blue marlin is released, its contribution may only be beginning. We used to release a blue marlin and wonder where it went. Today, that fish can tell us.

08/15/2026

1,496 POUNDS — AND THE RECORD STILL STANDS

There are fishing records that last a few years. Others survive for a generation. And then there is Ken Fraser’s Atlantic bluefin tuna, a record that has stood since 1979 and remains one of the great achievements in the history of big-game fishing.

The late 1970s were something of a golden era for giant bluefin tuna in the Canadian Maritimes. These were the days when fishermen went looking for “granders,” the name given to fish weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

On October 26, 1979, Ken Fraser, a welder and experienced fisherman, went out aboard the Lady and Misty with Captain Eric Samson off Nova Scotia. The waters were rich with mackerel and herring, exactly the kind of forage that attracts enormous bluefin tuna.

Fraser was trolling a mackerel daisy chain when a fish took the bait. It was not just another giant tuna.

What followed was surprisingly brief. Battles with enormous bluefin can last for hours, but Fraser fought his fish for only about 45 minutes. Using a heavy Fenwick rod and Penn International 14/0 reel, he was able to put tremendous pressure on the tuna. The fish reportedly remained primarily near the surface rather than making the deep dives that can turn a fight with a giant bluefin into an exhausting marathon.

Eventually the crew was able to get a gaff into it.
Only then did they fully appreciate what Fraser had caught.

The tuna was so enormous that handling it presented another problem. According to one account, the fish could not be fully brought aboard the relatively small boat and had to be brought back to shore alongside it.

When it was finally weighed, the number was almost unbelievable: 1,496 pounds.

The tuna measured 120 inches long with an extraordinary 83-inch girth. The International Game Fish Association recognizes Fraser’s catch as the All-Tackle World Record for Atlantic bluefin tuna.

And that is where the story becomes even more remarkable.

Think of everything that has changed in sportfishing since 1979. Boats are better. Electronics are vastly more sophisticated. Tackle has improved. Anglers have access to information and technology Fraser could never have imagined.

Yet the record remains his.

Part of the explanation lies in the demanding rules governing an IGFA record. The fish must be fought by the angler according to strict sporting requirements. Techniques sometimes used today in giant tuna fishing, such as fighting a fish from a rod holder or using a harpoon to land it, can make a catch ineligible for world-record consideration.

So the challenge is not simply finding a bluefin larger than Fraser’s. An angler has to find one, hook it, fight it and land it while complying with the rules necessary for the catch to qualify.

Ken Fraser died in October 2025 at the age of 81. He had spent much of his life as a familiar figure in the Canadian Maritimes fishing community and later wrote about the great era of giant tuna fishing.

But perhaps the simplest way to describe his place in sportfishing history is with one number: 1,496 pounds.

Nearly a half century later, nobody has beaten it.

Bimini Twist Library — preserving the people and stories that made sportfishing history.

Bimini Twist Library

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