A total of 228 anglers were out yesterday and some nice albacore were caught, he said.
"A 12.7kg albacore, that was the main catch.
"The major prize of $10,000 is still very much an open playing field."
This would be won by the best catch on a weight-to-species points scale rather than biggest overall.
Conditions were not looking as good today with a bit of a northerly breeze, Mr Bicknell said.
There had been concerns early last week that adverse weather could cause a rare postponement of the entire event.
The final weigh-in would be held at the Hawke's Bay Fishing Club on Ahuriri's Nelson Quay at 5pm which the public was welcome to attend followed by a prizegiving.
There was a total of $50,000 worth of prizes up for grabs.
The Your Solutions Megafish competition is the latest incarnation of the Hawke's Bay Sports Fishing Club's Coruba contest, which ran for about 35 years.
The competitors' briefing was held on Friday night at the clubhouse.
The biggest single catch last year, when no marlin or shark species were weighed, was a 40.8kg tuna, but the previous year the top prize, for the biggest catch, was claimed with a 136.6kg marlin.
The biggest in the history of the tournament, first held at Easter 1977, was a 417kg mako caught by John Cave, of Bay View, in 1999, and the most recent true monster of the ocean a 384.2kg mako caught by Graeme Bee, of Napier, in a three-hour battle at sea 10 years later.
The first report this summer of a striped marlin landed off the mid-lower east of the North Island was a 137.5kg catch weighed at Whangamata on the southeast Coromandel Peninsula coast on New Year's Eve.