Airmar East Coast Division

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2022 AIRMAR East Coast Division Captain of the Year

Capt. Jay Weaver

Blue Sky // 1,450 points

Georgetown Blue Marlin Tournament

1st Place – 500 pts.

Carolina Billfish Classic

1st Place – 500 pts.

Edisto Marina Billfish Tournament

3rd Place – 100 pts.

South Carolina Governor’s Cup Billfishing Series

Overall Champion – 250 pts.

Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament

3rd Place – 100 pts.

By Seth Dotson

46-year-old Capt. Jay Weaver, a South Carolina native, born and raised in Georgetown, a community centered around fishing, both competitive and commercial, has sportfished professionally for nearly half his life.

“I started getting paid when I was around 19, and I was fishing full-time when I was about 24,” says Weaver.

Weaver began his career just out of high school in the late 1990s, fishing commercially between the Outer Banks and the Bahamas. After doing this for about three years, Weaver moved to a charter boat based locally out of Charleston.

“I started as a mate and later moved up to captain,” he says. “That was when I started running boats. I later moved to a traveling boat around 2005, where I did a lot of fishing in the Caribbean and Mexico. I then moved from that to a more ‘serious’ fishing boat called the Day Maker, which I was on for another five or six years after that. I did a bunch of tournaments. I had some pretty good success with that boat. I was still on the East Coast and Bahamas.”

(Photo/SC Gov Cup/The Buckskin Billfish)

In 2016, Weaver heeded an inner call that beckoned him back to his homeland, where he has fished almost exclusively out of South Carolina for the past decade. He says he does not regret his decision to return to locally based fishing, as it allows him to live and work alongside family and old friends.

I get to spend a lot of time at home,” says Weaver. “My boss and his wife live in the same small town that I live and grew up in, and we have a lot of mutual friends and social circles in common.”

Weaver’s current fishing vessel is called the Blue Sky, a 60-foot sportfisher built by Spencer Yachts in 2016 for a separate party, who had to pull out of their contract with Spencer at the last minute. This all took place while the vessel was still under construction. It was saved at the last minute by a car dealer named Greg Smith, a longtime friend of Weaver’s, his current employer, and an angler by hobby. Although Weaver serves as captain of the Blue Sky, Smith remains the yacht’s owner.

“I’ve known Greg for about ten years,” says Weaver. “One of the first things he told me when I started was that all the managers who work for him had been with him since the ‘90s. He likes long-term employees who maintain long-term relationships. His team is a family-oriented group. He pretty much said all the right things to convince me to come work for him. And he has been true to his word through all of it. He and his wife treat me and my wife as though we were family.”

Because Smith’s boat was custom-built for a separate party, he and Weaver have made several modifications to its structure and systems to tailor it to their needs.

“We’ve repowered the boat with 1650-horsepower MAN engines,” Weaver explains. “It’s a fast, real agile boat for doing the tournament series that we do. And in this day and age, with the fuel prices being what they are, a fast boat means you can slow down to make it economical relative to other boats of its size.”

(Photo/SC Gov Cup/The Buckskin Billfish)

However, regardless of the build and performance of their fishing vessel, no captain could expect to succeed in competitive fishing without the aid of hardy and experienced crew. Weaver’s is nothing short of the best.

“Our full-time mate is Donnie Todd,” says Weaver. “He’s from Charleston and still lives there, which is about an hour’s drive from where we keep the boat. He has been with us for three years, and he does a great job. We have another mate who’s fished this latest tournament season with us named Matt Murphy. He lives in Charleston as well. He and Donnie are roommates and have been best buddies since they were in high school, so it’s a good dynamic having the two of them on the boat. It makes it all a lot of fun and makes for a laid-back atmosphere.”

With his crew as well as Smith along for the journey, Weaver was able to place first in this year’s Georgetown Blue Marlin Tournament and Carolina Billfish Classic, as well as claiming the title of series champion of the South Carolina Governor’s Cup.

“My crew includes some of my lifelong friends,” reflects Weaver. “It makes for a very easygoing social dynamic on the boat. Everybody is very comfortable with each other. Feelings don’t get hurt and feathers don’t get ruffled.”

2021 AIRMAR East Coast Division Captain of the Year

Capt. Miles Herring

Glazed // 1,000 pts.

Carolina Billfish Classic, 1st Place – 500 pts.

Edisto Billfish Tournament, Heaviest Marlin – 505 lbs. – 500 pts.

Captain Miles Herring grew up around boats. His father had boats most of his life and Herring has been on boats for 50 years, the same amount of time he’s been alive.

And despite winning the coveted Captain of the Year, AIRMAR East Coast Division for the 2021 season, Herring doesn’t consider himself a professional captain.

“Believe it or not I’ve never had a paying captain’s job, it’s just been recreational. I ran family boats, friends’ boats and just been fishing for fun,” he says. “I’ve got my captain’s license and I’ve been running boats my entire life, but that’s about the closest thing I’ve got to being a professional captain.”

While Herring’s father fished the occasional tournament, Herring deviated from this, consistently dipping his toes into the tournament scene over the last 30-plus years.

Herring received his captain’s license when he was just out of college in 1994. Since then, the Murrells Inlet, North Carolina native has made a comfortable spot on the tournament scene, fishing the East Coast corridor with family and friends on his 58-foot Dean Johnson, Glazed, of which he is the owner/operator. Herring looked long and hard for that boat. His father had Hatteras boats when his son was growing up but Herring decided to start out with a 36-foot Yellowfin that he had for six years before he outgrew it when his family began to grow.

“I started looking for a simple Carolina boat with low-cost operations and maintenance and I found this one by luck in December of 2017 and put it directly in the boatyard at Bayliss Boatworks and did a pretty extensive exterior upfit.”

At the time Herring had nine Krispy Kreme donut businesses and his children decided the new boat should be named Glazed, after the glazed donut of course.

And as involved as his four children—a 13, 15, 18, and 19-year-old—were in naming the boat, they have become just as involved with the fishing and work on it.

“It’s common for me to have all four of my kids plus a few other kids and adults on board,” Herring says. “We’re usually more kids than adults, it’s kind of funny really, we’ll have 10 to 12 people and most of them are under the age of 19. It’s kind of a low-stress operation, we have fun. We’re not the normal captain and two mates with a tower rod and a signal operator; we’re a few guys that grew up together and a bunch of our kids.”

It’s this team that helped Herring take on the Captain of the Year title. Herring discusses their accomplishments with a sense of pride and is quick to talk about the accomplishments of his team of family and friends rather than himself. His 13-year-old son Woods, for example, has been named a junior angler at the Carolina Billfish Classic two years in a row.

It was during the 2021 tournament that Herring and the Glazed team also won first place giving Herring 500 COTY points. For this tournament the crew approached it with what Herring calls “the basics”—four circle hooks and two lures.

“We’re doing what everybody else does, just hard work and paying attention,” Herring says. “We’re very competitive, but we have fun.”

For the Edisto Billfish Tournament, the Glazed team’s Wilson Springs reeled in a 505-pound marlin earning them another 500 COTY points (and cementing Herring’s East Coast COTY title). The fish was hooked at 2:19 p.m. and they didn’t boat it until 8:30 p.m. They didn’t get back to the dock until midnight. During that tournament Herring’s two sons, Woods and Miles, were on board as well as the sons of Herring’s friends.

“There were three people over 50, one around 30, and two 19 year olds, a 16 year old, a 14 and 13 year old,” Herring laughs. “It’s all short people, we were a full boat.”

That night was a memorable one for the group. As they backed into the dock Herring remembers a full crowd watching them. His wife and daughters had also driven three hours into the night to see the team weigh their winning marlin. But this is just how the Glazed team operates—it’s a group effort through and through with enough support to go around, something their captain is obviously proud of.

“I’ve got some really great anglers, we all have daytime jobs and this is what we do on the side and that makes it even more special,” Herring says before adding “For me to watch my son hand the rod to my other son, there’s some pride in that.”

Past Winners