The results are in!

15 permit
20 Bonefish

Grand Champions
600 points
4 fish
Joe Skrumbellos
Capt. Matt Fitzgerald

First runner up
450 points
3 fish on the last day
Ed Young
Scott Collins

Runner Up
350 points
2 fish
Kat Vallilee Linville
Capt. Drew Delashmit

Largest Fish
32 1/2 inches to the fork
Kat Vallilee Linville
Drew Delashmit

Bonefish Releases
800 points
Jeff Massey
Capt Justin Rea

Anglers can test their skill at catching tarpon, permit and bonefish during the annual Robert James Sales S.L.A.M. Celebrity Fishing Tournament scheduled Friday through Sunday, Sept. 11-13.

The catch-and-release event pits participating anglers against the species dubbed the “big three” game fish of the flats. Releasing all three on the same day is called a flats grand slam.

The S.L.A.M. is the first in an annual Florida Keys autumn tournament trilogy that benefits the fight against cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening chronic lung disease that is the United States’ leading genetic killer of children and young adults.

Scheduled celebrity participants include Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, former Denver Broncos football player Mark Cooper and former NASA space shuttle astronaut Bruce Melnick.

Anglers and teams earn points by catching and releasing fish in the tournament’s fly, spin/plug or general/bait categories. Awards are based on the most points accumulated representing all species of a slam.

Preceding the main event is The Angling Company’s Superfly, a one-day, one-fly tournament based at Hurricane Hole Restaurant & Marina, mile marker 4.5 oceanside. Fishing is scheduled Friday, Sept. 11.

Registration for the S.L.A.M. is slated for 4-6 p.m. Friday at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Grand Key Resort, 3990 S. Roosevelt Blvd., followed by a kick-off reception, silent auction, rules meeting and live auction.

Fishing in the S.L.A.M. is set for 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, and 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13. The public can join anglers and celebrities at a dockside party scheduled for 3-5 p.m. Saturday at Hurricane Hole.

The tournament awards party is planned for 3-5 p.m. Sunday at Hurricane Hole.

Entry for the S.L.A.M., which includes two days’ charter fees with a professional guide, is $3,700 for a two-angler team. The Superfly entry fee is $350 per angler who also fishes the S.L.A.M. or $500 per angler who only fishes the Superfly.

Event information and registration: www.redbone.org or

Illustrated above is a deep-water marine fish belonging to the family Gonostomatidae. More commonly known as bristlemouths, Gonostomatidae are easily the most plentiful vertebrates on on the planet. How many are we talking? Have a guess; I bet you’ll underestimate. (I certainly did.)

Here’s William J. Broad, writing on the bristlemouth last week for The New York Times:

Though the portrait of the bristlemouth is incomplete, scientists know enough to confidently assert that it far outstrips all other contenders for the title of most common vertebrate on the planet.

Noah Strycker, the author of “The Thing With Feathers,” a book about birds, recently told an interviewer that the domestic chicken “has more numbers” than any other vertebrate.

He put the planetary figure at 24 billion.

In contrast, ichthyologists put the likely figure for bristlemouths at hundreds of trillions — and perhaps quadrillions, or thousands of trillions.

“No other animal gets close,” said Peter C. Davison, a fish scientist at the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research, in Petaluma, Calif. “There are as many as a dozen per square meter of ocean.”

Click to read the full article.