This weekend was the annual Boys and Girls Club Billfish Tournament in Beaufort NC and after a year’s absence Tred Barta is back. Tred missed last year because of his spinal stroke and cancer but 14 months later he is well enough to return for the tournament that means so much to him and his wife.
This is the sixth year of the tournament. … I think we’ve raised some $560,000 in cash for the Boys & Girls Club of Coastal North Carolina. Both my wife, Annie, and myself are extremely passionate about the tournament. … One of the problems I have with big game fishing today is, and I have always spoken my mind, I’ve always stood my ground, is that you get a bunch of people together and you have a million dollar calcutta [a type of high-stakes tournament in which the big money payouts require the dead fish as proof] and we know that we should release our billfish. We know that it’s the right thing to do. We know that our billfish cannot be sold in restaurants. We know that they’re being killed all over the world. And yet, if there’s a million dollars in a brown paper bag, we’ve got no problem throwing three gaffs in them and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, we gave money to charity.’ … The unique thing about our tournament is that, No. 1, it’s honor-system scoring. No. 2, there is no calcutta. No. 3, there is no lie detector test. No. 4, your word is your bond.
Tred is an amazing guy and it’s great to see him persevering over the adversity he has recently faced. I suspect Tred’s action speak more loudly then the money he raised for the youth of coastal North Carolina.
