Artist and angler Carey Chen onboard for Bimini Wahoo Tournament

Chen painting blue marlin Carey Chen

Carey Chen (Center) with team at past fishing tournament at Bimini Big Game Club © Carey Chen

Chen’s paintings, which have fetched as much as $15,000, continue to grow in popularity with fishermen and collectors around the world. The historic Bimini Big Game Club Resort and Marina, which is hosting Wahoo Smackdown V, is working with Chen to create a unique first place trophy depicting wahoos, the greyhounds of the oceans and the fish de jour for the upcoming tournament.

'I can’t tell you what it means to have someone as talented as Carey—both behind an easel and as a highly respected angler— to join our tournament,' said Wahoo Smackdown V Tournament Director Captain Chase Camacho. 'This is a man who has attended tournaments all over the world, caught and released 300 blue marlin and spent months on the Florida flats fishing and observing the behaviors of snook, tarpon, stingrays and sharks. Though all the on-the-water activity, Carey has honed an eye for magnificent detail in creating his artwork. He is a marine master in every sense of the word.'

Chen, who just returned from an International Billfish Tournament in Puerto Rico where he won the Top International Angler trophy, will work closely with Camacho and anglers at the Wahoo Smackdown V and will return in early 2015 for the sixth installment of the tournament as Grand Marshal and to create another top prize trophy painting.

Joining Chen at Smackdown V and serving as Tournament Grand Marshal is writer John Hemingway, grandson of novelist and sport fishing legend Ernest Hemingway. Also joining the tournament as official hostess is Playboy Magazine Centerfold and Florida native Shawn Dillon.

Camacho said the entry fee for Wahoo Smackdown V (which includes four anglers per boat) is an affordable $1,250 ($100 for each additional angler). At stake is $30,000 in cash and prizes to be won.

For information regarding the next Wahoo tournament and to register online, please click here or call (800) 867-4764.