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Classic?s double delight!

Bermuda?s fourth annual Big Game Classic lived up to its name yesterday with two blue marlins tipping the scales at more than 500 pounds.

Day three of the annual event saw Don Boys and Dean Jones? 42-foot land a 694-lb big blue on the inside edge of Challenger banks.

Wayne Correia hooked the specimen and finally boated it after a four-hour battle.

?The rod screamed off and when I picked it up from out of the holder I immediately knew it was heavy,? said an exhausted Correia.

?It did a couple of jumps and didn?t really take up too much line. But then every time he got close to the boat he would go again. We certainly had a tough time getting the fish in the boat.?

Another boat enjoying success yesterday was John Whiting?s 50-ft which landed a 534-lb blue marlin while trolling on the outskirts of Argus Banks. Seventeen-year-old Japanese angler Wayne Chao took only an hour to land the biggest fish of his five-year career.

Whiting, 68, also experienced something he will never forget. ?God gave me the grace to see three big marlin jump off the stern of my boat today. It brings tears to your eyes when you see something like that.

?We hooked up and one fish threw the hook on us and the other fish was too big for my mate to hold onto. I estimate it was over 1,000-lbs but he couldn?t hold it.?

In accordance with International Game Fishing Association rules, anglers are not permitted to put their rods back into the rod holder once a fish has been hooked, something that might have cost Whiting and his crew the first place purse of $9,000 and the distinction of appearing in a two-page interview in Marlin Magazine.

?When you do that then it is an illegal fish. So we brought him in as far as we could and then let him loose,? explained Whiting. ?But his tail was on one side of my transom (stern) and the bill was down the other. He had to be around 14 to 15 feet.?

The three-day tournament concludes today.