Fishing — Yakima angler reels in $397,215 prize

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
Yakima angler Rich Hochrein cuts the cord around the bill of his prize-winning blue marlin prior to the official weigh-in at last weekend's big-money Bisbee's Black & Blue tournament off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Four years ago, Bruce Bosley of Yakima won the World Billfish Series Grand Championship and his fishing partner, John Bullo, also took home a hefty cash purse.
Seeing that happen — and getting a chance to shake their hands after their success — had an impact on another Yakima deep-sea angler named Rich Hochrein.
"They were my mentors," Hochrein says of Bosley and Bullo.
He's not referring to anything they did to help him out, though. He hasn't even fished with them. Hochrein is referring, rather, to what they were all about.
"I think it's the emotional aspect, the fact that they were serious," says Hochrein, who owns Summitcrest Construction with his wife, Rita. "They weren't the drinking-party fishermen. They were the sober, 'hey, let's go catch a big fish' guys.
"And they taught me if you're consistent in what you're doing, it pays off."

For Hochrein, it paid off big-time last weekend, when the Hochreins finished as the fourth-place team in the Bisbee's 25th Anniversary Black & Blue Marlin Tournament off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The world's richest off-shore fishing competition with a
$3.3 million purse, the competition drew more than 900 anglers and 185 boats representing all 50 states and 12 countries.
Fourth place — in that kind of competition — sounds impressive by itself. The Hochreins' fourth-place prize money, though, is the capper: $397,215.

And Bullo, Hochrein says, was one of the first to congratulate them.
"It was my turn," grins Hochrein, who has been entering these big-bucks Bisbee's Black & Blue tourneys (the name refers to the two kinds of marlin) since 1996. He first went billfishing two years before that, and he was immediately — apologies for the pun — hooked.
"When you see a fish rip off 300 yards of line, your adrenaline gets pumped up," says Hochrein, 50. "When they can rip off three football fields of line in 10 or 15 seconds, that gets you going."
Hochrein paid a $5,000 entry fee at the Bisbee's event, expecting to have several other anglers joining him. He had also put in Rita's name as a team angler "just in case of a worst-case scenario," he says, though that isn't a knock on her angling ability. When the two had gone billfishing while she was pregnant with their oldest son Richie, who's now 8, she had caught four fish and Rich didn't catch a single one.

As it turned out, Rita would be his only partner in the Bisbee's event; Rich's buddies all begged off or couldn't make it for one reason or another.
Using a live 15- to 20-pound tuna as bait — "Ninety percent of the blue marlin just cannot resist fresh tuna," he says — Hochrein hooked a hefty blue marlin. It was "not long, but really chubby," he says, and when he landed it after a half-hour tug-of-war, he wasn't sure if it would be more than the 300 pounds necessary to make the cut.

That meant a calculated risk: Take it in and have it weighed, and be done fishing for the day — though Rita would still be allowed to fish — or release it. If they took it to port to be weighed and the blue was under 300 pounds, they'd be penalized a significant amount of weight off any other qualifying fish they might catch.
The captain was motioning to Hochrein that the fish wasn't big enough. The deckhand, though, seemed to think it was.
"I don't speak Spanish and that's what he was speaking," Hochrein says, "but he kept motioning that it was really fat."
The deckhand was right, of course — the 319-pound blue was fat enough to become the fourth-heaviest catch of the three-day event, earning Hochrein nearly $400,000.

"On the last day (of the three-day event), it was worth a try," Hochrein says of that decision to take it in or not.
"And it paid off."