The sec­ond an­nu­al UTC Tri­ni Tar­pon Tour­na­ment char­i­ty fund-rais­ing event is set to splash off from Ju­ly 28-29. The two-day "catch-and-re­lease" tour­na­ment, host­ed by the Ro­tary Club of Diego Mar­tin (RCDM), promis­es to be a dream come true for all an­glers, as it takes place dur­ing the height of Trinidad's tar­pon sea­son when the mighty "sil­ver kings" will be rolling in the still wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria and the sea chan­nels in­to the Caribbean Sea called "The Bo­cas".

The RCDM's long-term goal is to trans­form the event in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al in­vi­ta­tion­al tour­na­ment with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of 40 qual­i­fy­ing in­ter­na­tion­al an­gling teams in­clu­sive of one qual­i­fy­ing lo­cal team. Dan Ja­cobs of Mar­lin and Sport Fish­ing mag­a­zines, who or­gan­ised and host­ed T&T's first in­ter­na­tion­al tar­pon fish­ing event en­ti­tled Trinidad Tar­pon Bash, will be the weigh mas­ter and head judge. The tour­na­ment will be us­ing the live weigh-in for­mat for fish­es that are 125lbs and over.

Al­so ex­pect­ed is Cap­tain Bruce Un­gar from the Bone­fish & Tar­pon Con­ser­va­tion Cen­tre, who will be con­duct­ing a si­mul­ta­ne­ous satel­lite tar­pon tag­ging ex­er­cise us­ing pop-up archival tags (PAT). Ad­di­tion­al­ly, or­gan­is­ers will al­so be giv­ing sev­er­al com­peti­tors DNA sam­pling kits in an at­tempt to get as many sam­ples as pos­si­ble, to aid in the re­search and con­ser­va­tion work be­ing done by Un­gar.

An­glers wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the tour­na­ment can en­ter with a fee of $650. The fee per­mits fish­ing in the des­ig­nat­ed zones dur­ing the morn­ing and evening ses­sions on the two tour­na­ment days, as well as en­trance to the Awards Din­ner and Prize Dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion on Ju­ly 30 at the T&T Yacht Club and any oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties host­ed by the or­gan­is­ers.

The reg­is­tra­tion and cap­tains' meet­ing is sched­uled for Ju­ly 26 at 7 pm at the T&TYC.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion e-mail trini­tar­pon­tour­na­ment@gmail.com or call Win­field Ale­ong at 221-9038/683-6602/688-6602.