The White Marlin Open is next week, here in Ocean City. I’m not excited about it. In the 16 or however many months I’ve worked for the paper it was by far the worse experience I’ve had (the second worse was the crazy Romanian party with the Romanian ambassador but that’s a story for another day).

    The WMO is the largest billfish tournaments in the world and one of the largest tournaments overall. Cash prizes last year were record setting with like 2 million plus being given out.

    I’m very very very familiar with White Marlins because in the past year I’ve read tons and tons of reports about the stupid fish. The government was considering putting a ban on them so I got stuck with writing about it.

   The reason I hate the actual tournament because it’s a lot of fisherman drunk for five days straight. It’s loud, crowded and just annoying. But the worse of it is that because you never know which fish will win the tournament, you have to have a reporter there nonstop to make sure the paper gets a photo of the winner and winning fish.

    As a journalist you sit in this press section cramped with all the other reporters. Behind you is a fence that attempts to keep drunk people away, but often time you have beer spilled on you or splashed on you by accident.

    The next problem with being in the press box is that the fish that are brought in just get tossed on the ground and stay there for hours. I have a super sensitive nose and it KILLS me being there. The smell of dead fish mixed with beer in the summer heat is NOT good.

    The fish situation gets worse because every night a professional carver named Rose (this scary woman with lots of tattoos) shows up with these fancy knives and cuts all the fish up. Blood is flying off her blades! She’s tossing fish heads into trash cans 10 feet away. It’s disgusting. I freaked out last year when she put the trashcan behind me without telling me and then missed and I got hit with intestines form a blue marlin.  God it was sooooooooo nasty.

   When I say "freaked out" I really mean it. For those of you who don’t know me. I HATE being dirty. It’s ok if I"m doing yard work or playing sports and then go home and shower right away. BUT FISH BLOOD AND GUTS!!! I yelled and sorta did a dancing thing where i was trying to get the blood off my shirt. Then I freaked out more cause the blood was on my hands and had to wipe them on my shirt to get the blood off them.  It was a mess and the whole time Rose was starring at me like I was wierd. She had blood all over her and giant knives so I was too scared to say anythign mean or confront her.

    If all of this wasn’t bad enough, you then have to deal with the other reporters. See I get lucky with the things I cover for the newspaper. I have minimal interaction with other reporters. But for the WMO everyone and their mother is there. There are at least two guys from the other papers that creep me out because they are dirty looking and take photos of young girls. Both also hit on anything with breast!

    So I hate the WMO. The good thing? Next week is my last week for working for the paper full time! So I should be getting out of having to cover the damn thing! I’ll also be honest and admit that if you go to the event as a spectator it is fun. There are tons of people and its like one giant party. It just sucks to work it.