BOCA GRANDE -- At first glance, it looks like a chaotic naval battle with no rules of engagement. Scores of small open-fisherman boats, skippered by red-faced, yelling men, are racing and dodging each other. Multiple ramming assaults seem imminent but few actually occur.

Venture closer to the fleet and spot women in bikinis, a couple of pet dogs, a bearded man dressed in Hawaiian hula girl drag, and in one garish craft covered with logos, four men wearing bow ties, tam o'shanters and plaid Bermuda shorts.

Is this the end of the world as we know it?

Nope, it's the setting for one of cable television's top-rated fishing shows: SunSports' NEXTEL Professional Tarpon Tournament Series, held in southwest Florida's renowned Boca Grande Pass. Five qualifying events were held this spring, culminating in the Jim Beam Tarpon Cup Championship on June 19. The winner, Team McKee, got a 22-foot Century bay boat with motor and trailer for catching and releasing two tarpon totalling 317 pounds using an ungainly-looking plastic-tailed jig.

''It's like a NASCAR event,'' tournament spokesman Bob Bartels said.

Well, sure it is, if you consider 50 boats jockeying around in no apparent order trying to hook ill-tempered, 150-plus-pound behemoths anything like a car race.

But it's fun, anyway. Somehow the boats keep from sinking each other, and somebody always catches a big fish. There's usually at least one big shark drama at each event.

In short, made for television.

Boca Grande Pass has for decades enjoyed the reputation as the Home of the Whopper. The 'silver kings' come into the deep, natural channel each spring for what fisheries scientists believe is courtship, then head out into the open Gulf to spawn later in summer. A virtually closed arena with abundant big fish makes the Pass the ideal outdoor television location. In last month's qualifying event, captain Kenny Hyatt's Team Century/Fish Hog caught and released a 216-pounder. Cameras captured all the action.

THE VILLAINS

Playing the villains in this maritime reality show are the sharks -- huge hammerheads and bulls -- whose sole object is to chomp on a hapless tarpon that has been hooked, has fought and is exhausted.

Chris Claypool lost an estimated 90-pounder to a bull shark during the June 18 tournament after fighting it through the zig-zagging fleet of boats for nearly 20 minutes. The tarpon wouldn't have been big enough to win, but Claypool and Team YoZuri could have used the points they would have gotten for a release.

''We needed the 50 release points. Now I've got a sore back, and we got no points,'' Claypool fumed.

About an hour later, teammate Brian Baugher successfully released an estimated 120-pound tarpon after captain Ozzie Fischer chased away another bull shark.

''Everybody here, when the shark comes, puts [the line] in free spool,'' said Fischer, last year's Jim Beam Cup champion. ``I just try to run on top of the shark. If the shark misses, you're gonna get the fish. A lot of times, the sharks miss them the first and second times.''

According to teammate Paul Michele, the hammerheads are worse than the bulls.

''The bulls are nasty, mean and stupid,'' Michele said. ``The hammerheads, when they want a tarpon, they're dialed in, and they're going to get it.''

Keeping a potential winning tarpon away from the marauding sharks is fraught with hazards because the fish must be towed to the tournament scales, located on a boat anchored in the Pass, to be weighed. If the tarpon is dead when released, it doesn't count.

NO LIVE BAIT

In an all-out effort to dodge sharks and free themselves, hooked fish tangle anglers' lines, run circles around propellers, and attempt to jump into rival boats. But the situation would be worse if live bait were used.

Instead, tournament competitors use roughly similar equipment -- stout conventional rods loaded with 50- to 80-pound-test line; 100-pound leaders and six- to eight-ounce lead-head jigs with plastic tails. Unlike conventional jigs, the tails do not have hooks; instead the jig dangles from an 8/0 circle hook through a ring eye.

''Because they are circle hooks, when you feel the bite, you just reel,'' Fischer said.

Fighting a big fish for a long time (especially attractive women wearing bikinis) is almost guaranteed to garner TV time. Joe Mercurio, the ebullient host, producer and promoter of the show, follows tournament boats around in a camera boat, then jumps on board during the fight to do play-action interviews. Beleaguered anglers are forced to smile gamely, avoid cursing and politely answer questions with Mercurio's microphone shoved in their faces -- all while trying to subdue a strong, primitive quarry angrily fighting for its life.

''I think it's unlike most other freshwater and saltwater shows because it really captures the excitement of the tournament itself,'' Bartels said.

No kidding. You can catch all the action beginning July 1 on SunSports.