On September 11 and 12, the Warrior Memorial Reefs Foundation held the 2026 Reels & Spears Gulf Classic out of Point South Marina at Bay Point in Panama City Beach, Florida.
The foundation builds memorial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico to honour fallen service members, and the tournament is how those reefs get funded. In the days before the event, a three thousand pound reef module was lifted and towed from the Man in the Sea Museum to the marina so that competitors and families could see one up close.
The weekend
Friday the 11th was a complete rainout. The fleet still beat last year's numbers.
Reels Division. Team Critical Care swept it for the second year running: amberjack 68.4 lbs, grouper 27.8 lbs, red snapper 26.8 lbs.
Spears Division. Amberjack went to Team Snapper Slapper at 61.4 lbs, grouper to Team Knot 2 Deep at 49.1 lbs, red snapper to Team HBC at 33.1 lbs, and lionfish to Team Island Diver with 110 fish.
Across the tournament, 283 lionfish were taken off Gulf reefs in a single weekend. Lionfish are an invasive species in the Atlantic and Gulf with no natural predators in these waters, so every tournament like this one is a small dent in a large problem.
Why we were there
StingMaster is a 4% lidocaine topical analgesic cream with a unique blend of plant extracts. It has been carried in dive shops since 2020, and spearfishers and lionfish hunters are a good part of who buys it, so when the foundation got in touch we were glad to put it in the competitor goodie bags.
Our thanks to Gretchen Theodorou and the Warrior Memorial Reefs board for including us, to everyone who fished a soaked weekend and still filled the docks, and to the volunteers who ran it.
We will be back in 2027, and next time in person.
Learn more about the foundation's work at WarriorMemorialReefs.org.
