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Hawaii Division Points Breakdown

CAPT. NICK DURHAM
Tantrum / 2,950 pts

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Lazy Marlin Hunt

• 2nd Place – 300 pts

Rock N Reel Tournament

• 2nd Place – 300 pts

Fire Cracker Open

• 2nd Place – 300 pts

Kona Throw Down

• 1st Place Heaviest Marlin – 500 pts
• 3rd Place Heaviest Marlin – 100 pts

Skins Marlin Derby

• 1st Place Heaviest Marlin – 500 pts

Hawaii Lure Maker’s Challenge

• 3rd Place – 100 pts

Big Island Marlin Tournament

• 3rd Place – 100 pts

It’s a Wrap

• 1st Place – 500 pts

Hawaiian Marlin Tournament Series

• Champion – 250 pts

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The Steady Approach to Victory

Some captains win by being daring. Captain Nick Durham, at the helm of Tantrum, a custom-built 41-foot G&S sportfisher based in Kona, Hawaii, guided his team to the Hawaiian Marlin Tournament Series Championship by staying steady. Steady enough to out-fish slow bites, out-last pressure, and out-think moments when the wrong move would have turned a qualifier into a heartbreak story.

“I never felt like we were safe, not even on the last day of the series,” says Durham, a native of Sydney, Australia. “In Kona, someone can catch two bog qualifiers in a day. You keep fishing like you’re behind. ”That mindset carried Tantrum through eight tournaments and into one of the most dominant victories in recent memory, earning Durham his first Captain of the Year award.

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Early Life and Kona Commitment

Durham grew up fishing Sydney’s estuaries and beaches with his father. “My school holidays were all fishing,” he says. His father’s connection through the Sydney Game Fishing Club put him on his first boat, named Tantrum, at 15. Durham’s parents pushed him to complete a degree at the University of Technology Sydney, a three-year program he stretched to six by deferring semesters to fish the Great Barrier Reef.

Trips to Tonga with his mother, who was doing aid work there, pulled him deeper offshore. He handlined tuna from pangas and caught his first billfish in Vavaʻu. After founding Tantrum Lures, the next move was to Kona. First, he mated, then after a refit, the G&S hull surfaced, and he took the helm of the newly renamed Tantrum. By 2025, he had nearly 20 years on deck, nine years of learning Kona full-time, and his first real shot at a series title.

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Tournament Highlights

The season began with the Lazy Marlin Hunt, where no big fish qualified. “It was all points,” he says. The top boat posted seven; Tantrum had six, close enough to show they were in the fight. The Kona Kick Off became the year’s only miss, but the Firecracker Open delivered a stabilizing finish. “Fishing was slower this year, so maximizing tags mattered more than ever,” he says.

Then came the Kona Throw Down, the tournament that changed everything. On day one, Pursuit, the boat Durham once crewed on, hung a 500-plus-pounder early. Day two brought a 417-pounder for Tantrum, then the defining moment in the final minutes. A heavy sonar mark appeared, the long corner disappeared, and the marlin fought strangely. “Something felt off,” Durham said. “I thought it might be foul-hooked. So, we backed off a bit on drag and took our time.” When the fish surfaced, the hook was barely pinned near the dorsal fin. “If we’d fished it like normal, we would’ve lost it,” he said. Instead, they weighed a 715-pounder, their second qualifier of the day and the biggest payday of his career.

Momentum rolled straight into the Skins Marlin Derby, where no qualifiers on days one and two created a mountain of rollover money for day three. Off the lava flows, Durham marked the right fish.

“Big explosion. Ripping line. I knew it was better than average,” he says. After a 44-minute controlled fight, a 566-pounder hit the deck, sweeping all three days, all big-fish pots, and the points thanks to two additional tags. “We caught it at 9:37 a.m. Then we listened to the radio for six hours, hoping no one else got one. That felt like forever,” he says.

With a growing lead, Tantrum stayed aggressive. In the Lure Maker Challenge, Durham ran his own spread and finished third, helped by a gamble run north to “The Grounds” and a four-fish tally.
In the week leading up to the Big Island Marlin Tournament, Durham and his team weighed a 1,039-pound blue marlin, his first grander as a captain. Thus, hopes were high for hot tournament fishing; however, it flipped from red-hot practice to painfully slow fishing. Only two boats tagged two marlin in three days. Tantrum’s day-one fish earned third on time. “It wasn’t pretty, but it preserved our Series lead,” he says.

The finale, It’s a Wrap, mirrored the season’s grind. Tantrum caught two marlin on day one and held off the fleet, winning on a tiebreaker when another team matched the total on a later day. At the series end, team Tantrum—angler Jeff Stafford and mates Lee Findley and Nick Watson—finished with 5,628.5 points to second place’s 3,400.

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Reflections and the Future

“I’d love to attribute it all to our Tantrum Lures, but it’s more than that,” Durham says. “Being a busy charter boat that fishes some 200 days a year means the tournament schedule isn’t a shock to the system. Fishing hard, day in and day out, lets us fine-tune everything—leader rigs, lures, trolling RPM, sonar settings, all of it.”

Looking ahead to 2026, he says, “The plan is to fish the series hard again and see if we can defend our title.”

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Check out more Captain of the Year Results and History

2025 Hawaii Division Captain of the Year Results

Divisions: East Coast / Florida / Gulf Coast / International / Hawaii 

Sanctioned Tournaments     Rules   Past Standings 2024 / 2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017  /  2016  /  Past Winners

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