Ron Hamlin is considered one of the sport's most innovative captains and accomplished anglers.  At 15 he started training as a mate; a year later he was working with Captain Frank Ardine on the Sail Ahoy.  He tagged his first sailfish in 1960; today that number has grown to five figures.

In 1971, Hamlin got his first job as a captain and won the Walker’s Cay Blue Marlin Tournament-- the first of many wins.  A worldwide fishing explorer,  he and his crew were the first Americans to fish Venezuela’s La Guaira Bank where he caught that country's first 1,000-pound blue marlin.

For more than 40 years his innovations-- including wind-on leaders spliced with Dacron;  formaldehyde baits; pitch-bait techniques; and a 1998 pledge  to fish only with circle hooks-- have had a revolutionary impact on the sport.  With more than 25,000 billfish releases, Hamlin has spent his career not simply breaking records, but shattering them.