The defending Sport Fishing Championship league champions made a statement at home. Half of the field recorded grand slams at the Texas Billfish Open presented by No Rivals, finishing Championship Sunday with 2,675 points to secure a dominant victory
Led by Captain Spencer Johnson, the Lone Stars entered Sunday with a commanding 950-point advantage after a spectacular day two performance and never gave the rest of the field an opportunity to close the gap.
“Everyone worked hard,” said Captain Spencer Johnson of the Texas Lone Stars. “We landed on ‘em and made our bites count.”
Challenging conditions greeted the fleet for Friday’s shotgun start; a stiff wind making for a rougher and longer run offshore than anticipated. The Third Coast Renegades were the first club to capitalize, taking the early tournament lead behind sailfish releases from Drake Beasley and Kevan Billings.
Donnie McMahon released the tournament’s first white marlin and an additional sailfish release gave the Black Flags their first tournament lead of the season. The Renegades continued answering nearly every Black Flags release, setting up a back-and-forth battle as the evening bite developed.
The Lone Stars and Bryan Richter released two blue marlin later in day one to gain the lead, however Donnie McMahon and the Black Flags countered with a blue marlin of their own to complete the first Gulf Division Grand Slam of the season, triggering a 200-point bonus and sending West Florida into the overnight lead.
Saturday saw the Lone Stars regain their form from 2025, putting on a show that would not relent until it was time to head home a day later.
The Lone Stars opened Saturday with a triple sailfish release from Sutton Schoonover, Raul Perez and Bryan Richter, with all three fish coming within three minutes. The flurry immediately returned Texas to the top of the leaderboard.
Perez added another sailfish before Richter released another blue marlin, leaving the defending league champions only a white marlin short of a Grand Slam. At 11:25 AM, Roberto Velazquez delivered it. His white marlin completed the slam, and the 200-point bonus pushed the Lone Stars to 1,950 points before noon.
Logan Radford followed with his first fish of the tournament and season, a white marlin that pushed the Lone Stars beyond 2,000 points. More releases followed throughout the afternoon, and Texas finished Saturday sitting comfortably atop the standings with 2,300 points.
It was a performance reminiscent of their second place finish in the 2025 Pensacola Billfish Release Tournament, where the Lone Stars also posted three grand slams.
“We had 19 [releases] in Pensacola, this was 17 so we were a little off our record,” Johnson said. “We were pushing for it.”
The standout performance of the weekend went to Lone Stars angler Bryan Richter, the Port Aransas local who posted a personal grand slam while releasing all three of the club’s blue marlin this weekend, along with one white marlin and three sailfish.
“This is the first regular season win for us so it’s really awesome to catch a bunch of fish in our hometown,” Richter said.
The Black Flags remained in second after Marty Wilson released another blue marlin, while the Renegades closed Saturday with a productive evening bite to reach 875 points. The Black Flags prefished by entering last weekend’s Texas Legends tournament along with a couple of other squads, including the victorious Lone Stars.
“Last week definitely set us up for success here at the Texas Billfish Open,” said West Florida Black Flags Captain Danny Watts.
On Championship Sunday, The Third Coast Renegades and Dax Wright opened the scoring with a sailfish at 7:00AM, while Garett Frazier simultaneously hooked into a blue marlin. The crew was leadering Wright’s sail when the blue broke off.
It was a heartbreaking miss. A successful blue marlin release would have completed the Renegades’ Grand Slam and triggered another 200-point bonus, immediately vaulting them into second place.
“We had three different blues that we lost,” said Third Coast Renegades AC co-owner and angler Garrett Frazier. “It would have been a different scenario if we had landed them, but that’s fishing.”
The Renegades remain top of the division, with a 900-point margin to the now-second place Lone Stars. Should the standings hold for two more tournaments, it would set up an October rematch in Cabo for the league title at the Zane Grey Championship Playoffs.
“We gotta finish the season strong,” Frazier said.
The Gulf Coast Cowboys joined the morning bite with a sailfish from Jordon Benefield, but the Lone Stars quickly made it clear they weren’t interested in simply protecting their lead.
Sutton Schoonover and Bryan Richter combined on a sailfish double at 8:10 AM. Schoonover added another just 13 minutes later, and Raul Perez followed with a sailfish at 9:16.
While first place began slipping out of reach, the battle behind the Lone Stars erupted as more clubs cashed in on the grand slam bonus.
At 9:28 AM, the Mississippi Blues landed one of the biggest fish of their tournament when Craig Jackson released a blue marlin to trigger the 200-point multiplier. Suddenly, the Blues had 900 points and were firmly in the fight for a podium position.
At that stage, half of the field: the Cowboys, Renegades and Louisiana Canyons, remained one blue marlin away from Grand Slams of their own.
Meanwhile, the Texas Lone Stars kept running up the score.
Raul Perez added another sailfish at 10:26 AM, stretching the Lone Stars’ total to 2,675 points.
The Renegades continued doing everything they could to climb the leaderboard.Frazier added another sailfish at 10:39 AM, while Dax Wright and Frazier added more sailfish shortly after noon.
The Louisiana Canyons applied pressure late. After Jaselyn Berthelot opened the Canyons’ Sunday scoring with a sailfish, Joe Nixt and Berthelot converted a sailfish double at 10:52 AM.
At 1:12 PM, Berthelot released a blue marlin, completing the Canyons’ grand slam and earning the 200-point bonus. The massive scoring swing launched Louisiana from the bottom of the standings all the way into fourth place with 1,125 points.
Ahead of them, the Renegades had climbed to 1,275 points, only 75 behind the second-place Black Flags. But despite threatening a grand slam from the opening minutes of Sunday, the elusive blue marlin never came.
At 2 PM, the fleet turned toward Port Aransas, in order to make it back in the jetty by the 4:00 PM deadline.
The tournament was over, and the Texas Lone Stars defended home turf, and the Xotic Outdoors Hunt for the Zane Grey Championship Playoffs just got more interesting.
Final Leaderboard
Texas Lone Stars – 2,675 Points
West Florida Black Flags – 1,350 Points
Third Coast Renegades – 1,275 Points
Louisiana Canyons – 1,125 Points
Mississippi Blues – 900 Points
Gulf Coast Cowboys – 625 Points