They came together as a team for the start of the rockfish season a year ago, more for the camaraderie and their long-standing love affair with fishing than for the competition itself and the opportunity to cash in at big-money tournaments such as the Championship on the Chesapeake scheduled for Friday through next Sunday.
Yet there is a part of this threesome of highly accomplished women that wants to show the rest of the field in the Maryland Saltwalter Sportfishing Association's annual spring fling that Maria Flynn's boat didn't simply make a wrong turn and wind up in the middle of what traditionally has been a male-dominated event.
“It's a high … getting out and doing something that's traditionally a men's sport, being out on the bay all day on a beautiful day, if you get a fish on top of that, that's the cherry on the sundae because you've already had a great day,” said Flynn, a real estate attorney in Annapolis.
Said Kim Madigan, the boat's captain, who works as a yacht financing specialist in Annapolis: “We have guys offer to fish with us all the time, but we have to really nicely say, ‘No, thank you,' without hurting anyone's ego. It's pretty funny.”
Naming the boat Legally Blonde after the movie starring Flynn's celebrity doppelganger, actress Reese Witherspoon, Flynn had trouble finding a captain for the opening week of the 2014 rockfish season.
It was around then that she met Madigan, who was shopping at All Tackle Marine in Annapolis when she was introduced to Flynn by local charter captain Steve Linhard.
“Maria approached countless guy-captains but kept striking out,” Madigan recalled. “Everyone was already booked or charged an outrageous fee. It was a fishing match made in heaven.”
Joined by Katie Chaney, another longtime angler who sells and refurbishes boats for a living in and around Annapolis, the team has competed in a handful of events, with fairly impressive results.
Typically, the events are geared toward raising money for charitable causes such as autism awareness and breast cancer research.
At their first event last spring, a local tournament on the Severn River that is held the same weekend as the MSSA's championship, they caught a 53-inch rockfish.
At last year's Boatyard Bar & Grill tournament in Annapolis, they placed in the top 10 for men and women. After this year's event, held April 18, they persuaded the restaurant's owner and the tournament's director, Dick Franyo, to include a category strictly for women next year.
“We usually do really well, but I really think it's more luck than anything else, honestly,” Madigan said.
Madigan credits a lot of the team's success to Flynn's father, Steve, a lifelong fisherman who gives them scouting reports before the start of most tournaments, with information he receives from other veterans on the bay.
“We know when to go north and when to go south because of Maria's dad and having us all to dinner and having all the team debriefed after we fish,” Madigan said. “He always calls his friends up and down the bay. It's an easy way to see the entire bay in a snapshot when you have resources like that.”
Steve Flynn helped his daughter develop a love for fishing at an early age.
When she was about 8 years old, Flynn was given the choice of going to church with her mother or fishing with her father.
“I chose fishing, and I've loved it ever since,” said Flynn, now 35. “I'm a spiritual person and I find God on the water or in a goose blind or whatever peaceful area of nature I'm in.”
Flynn said she and her father bonded during those long offshore fishing trips to catch shark and tuna, or bone-fishing in the Florida Keys. “There's nothing like owning my own boat, to get the girls on it and fish the bay,” she said. “I tell you, I just get high off of it.”
Like her Legally Blonde teammates, Chaney said her love for fishing goes back to childhood, fishing with her father, Calvert, on the West River near the family's home in Shady Side. Chaney's passion for being on the water eventually grew to include racing as well.
Though she helped win a Gold Cup race in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a few years back, Chaney's competitiveness doesn't extend to fishing.
“To be honest, I couldn't care less about the competition. I just love to be on the water,” Chaney said. “We got skunked on Saturday in the Boatyard tournament, but it was beautiful on the bay and we had a good group.”
Chaney said she has childhood memories similar to those of her Legally Blonde teammates.
“I remember going out with my dad as a kid and we got skunked, everyone was catching fish all around us, but just to be on the water and hanging out with my dad — just the two of us — was special,” she said.
Madigan, who grew up fishing with her grandfather, Charlie Gough, a commercial waterman on Rehoboth Bay, said the Legally Blonde fishing team typically is the only one made up exclusively of women.
“Every other boat has a male captain or a male mate; we're the only one [with all women] that I'm aware of,” Madigan said. “All three of us own boats. I don't have many girlfriends that fish, and the ones that do fish with me.”
That could start to change, based on data Madigan uses in her job writing titles for yacht owners. According to Madigan, figures provided by the state Department of Natural Resources and the Coast Guard show that “female first on title” for boats is “the fastest-growing demographic” in the industry.
“As a loan officer, if I'm really good to one person, she'll tell all her friends about me, and I'll get a ton of business that way,” Madigan said. “I think women are getting more and more excited about fishing. That's nice.”
But, at least this week on the Chesapeake, Legally Blonde is expected to be the only all-female boat.
While the three are accomplished on the water, mistakes do occur. That's where Flynn's name for her boat comes in handy.
“The name of the boat gets us out of some mishaps,” Madigan said. “People will say, ‘They're legally blonde, we'll cut 'em some slack.' It's definitely been to our favor, no question.”
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