On our nation’s 250th anniversary, the “Cup” runneth over.
This summer the United States of America celebrates 250 years as a nation. Coincidentally, 2026 also marks 25 years since the terrorist attack on 9/11, and 25 years of the Manhattan Cup catch and release striped bass tournament. Now based out of Liberty Landing along the Morris Canal in Jersey City, the Manhattan Cup is being held on Friday, June 5th.
To look more closely at what the day is all about, it’s important to look at all three of these anniversaries coming together in the same year, and particularly the timelines.
The Manhattan Cup was initially co-founded in 1998 by Capt. Frank Crescitelli, then president of the New York chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), as a way of promoting conservation and environmental awareness for the waters surrounding Manhattan. After a falling out with the national organization, Crescitelli and several key board members, including “Cup” co-founder Dave Fallon, went off and formed the Fishermen’s Conservation Association (FCA) as a better way to directly serve the New York area fishing community’s needs.
“The FCA was started by a small group of former CCA members who wanted an organization that could take on local projects without having to deal with the national bureaucracy,” Crescitelli told Ken Moran of the NY Post in a 2006 interview. And thus FCA would continue running the Manhattan Cup, for many years based out of Chelsea Piers on the west side of New York City along the Hudson River, with many notable attendees including baseball Hall-of-Famer Wade Boggs, top chef Tom Colicchio, and the late, great E-Street rocker Clarence Clemons.
There are couple of gap years with the Manhattan Cup, through the dissolution of FCA, and then of course came COVID. But it was that fateful Tuesday morning 25 years ago on September 11 that the true spirit of the Manhattan Cup emerged from alongside the green Morris Canal Entrance Buoy 1 at the harbor entrance to Liberty Landing Marina. “That’s where I was in 9/11 and I’ll never forget how I felt that day,” Crescitelli told me last year during the 24th Manhattan Cup, wistfully pointing out towards lower Manhattan.
On September 11, 2001 the Fin Chasers skipper was running a charter that would put him on that very spot in the lower Hudson River as the towers fell, and a Coast Guard crew instructed him to remain on that spot to safeguard that canal entrance. “And that’s what spurned me to do this, when these guys started coming home, to go protect us from what happened there,” Crescitelli said, adding “I filmed that whole thing and I stood right at that green can right there, and I’m at that same green can today, but for a different reason.”
The reason is simple; never leave a man behind, especially those brave men and women willing to sacrifice everything in defense of 250 years of freedom.
Task Force Bruiser
Robert “Nico” Gil was born and raised in Brooklyn. At the age of 16, he watched the Twin Towers fall, prompting him to join the U.S. Army after high school where he rose to the rank of sergeant in 19 Delta Calvary Scouts, a unit responsible for the targeting and capturing high-value targets, and training Iraqi police. He would serve 4 years, including a pair of 15-month tours with multiple deployments inside Ramadi in Iraq.
“Command would shift us around to enemy hotspots,” Gil said later, adding “Wherever enemy activity was the worst they would send my unit in to put the fire out.” In 2006, 2 years after the fall of Fallujah, Ramadi had become the center of the insurgency with the Islamic State of Iraq, a front group for al-Qaeda in Iraq, declaring Ramadi as its capital. Stars and Stripes referred to the Battle of Ramadi as a high-intensity conflict involving Gil’s 19 Delta personnel, along with SEAL Team 3 and Army infantry. Gil called it “the bloodiest engagement of the entire war.”
“We had the most losses, and come to find out I was in the most heavily hit unit,” Gil told me on April 4th while sitting beside the Lackawaxen River for an opening day trout derby in Pennsylvania. The event, among many others, is presented by Gil’s non-profit, Fin Chaser Warrior Outdoors, a veteran-founded nonprofit that hosts outdoor events for veterans where they can rediscover purpose and camaraderie through the power of the outdoors. Its name spawned from Capt. Crescitelli’s charter business, and is supported by proceeds from the Manhattan Cup.
“We’re the ones that broke al-Qaeda,” Gil told me, describing how that success came at a heavy loss. “We were losing a hundred a day, like my unit lost 487 guys.” Mind you, that’s out of 3,500 military personnel. “That’s a lot of guys. That’s lost, that’s not wounded, we had one in three wounded, we had hundreds of Purple Hearts, but that’s KIA (killed in action) 487 out of our task force,” he added.
On his last combat patrol, Gil was the gunner manning an open turret atop a lightly armored vehicle when a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives attacked the convoy. Gil opened fire with his 50-caliber in an attempt to neutralize the attacker, when the vehicle exploded just 25 yards from his position. The patrol was saved, but it caused catastrophic damage to Gil’s truck and its occupants. Gil suffered a traumatic brain injury and critical physical wounds that required removal of shattered bones from his body and put an end to his overseas deployment.
Fin Chasers Warriors
As with so many service veterans, the long, difficult road back to civilian life was marred by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from the bloody conflict overseas. “His psychological state was so unbearable that he tried to take his own life,” noted Gary Caputi in an article about Nico Gil’s participation in the Manhattan Cup a few years ago. Gil was in and out of Veteran’s Administration hospitals for several years until a doctor recommended fly-tying to help deal his depression, which would eventually lead him to the Manhattan Cup.
“At the Cup, with this guy’s enthusiasm, I was like, I don’t get it, I mean, what is the Cup,” Gil said of his introduction to Crescitelli. “Oh man don’t you know the menhaden species and how important they are,” Gil recalled Crescitelli speaking to him of the local ecosystem in the lower Hudson where so many striped bass spawn every spring. “So we started getting into the conservation discussion where I realized that I can still fight.”
| TOURNAMENT DETAILS |
| The 25th Manhattan Cup will be held on Friday, June 5, 2026 out of Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City (the green Morris Canal Entrance Buoy 1 is at 40° 42.565’N / 74° 1.889’W). Captains’ check-in is at 6:30 a.m. followed by a mandatory captain’s meeting inside Liberty Landing Restaurant. Boats depart from the lower Hudson River between 8 and 9 a.m., then all boats must be back at port by 4 p.m. to return catch sheets for tracking the day’s awards.
To help support combat veterans through the Fin Chaser Warriors Outdoors non-profit as well as Gray Fishtag Research’s annual Northeast Striped Bass Study, the Manhattan Cup is underwritten by The Fisheries Conservation Trust, a 501C3 non-for-profit corporation. There are a wide range of sponsorship opportunities for various levels of monetary and/or product donations (tax deductible), and companies or individuals can support the Manhattan Cup through the Sponsor-a-Vet or by sponsor an entire boat full of veterans. For details reach out to Mike Dean at 917-873-6651 or mdean329@gmail.com or register at manhattancup.com. |
Gil added, “We’re the ones that are responsible, maintaining the bug life, maintaining the trout species, maintaining the menhaden, that’s a whole ecosystem of food, tourism, industry, history and spiritual health.” For a military service vet, even with the numerous combat metals and a Purple Heart, in those early days when PTSD perhaps wasn’t fully understood. By 2012, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported that an average of 22 veterans died by suicide every day.
Today, Gil and veterans like him dedicate time and effort through non-profit organizations like Fin Chaser Warrior Outdoors to help prevent veteran suicide by promoting mental, physical, and emotional well-being. And according to Gil, fishing is great way of doing that for fellow warriors. “A rod is a rifle, and conservation is the way that we can still defend our land,” he said.
After participating in his very first Manhattan Cup following the darkest moment in entire life, the Brooklyn native discovered the outstanding fishing that could be found in his very own backyard. “I really wanted to learn how to fish, so I started searching programs and bounced around, really just taught myself how to fish going through these programs,” Gil said. The next season, Gil won the Manhattan Cup as a vet aboard one of the boats donated by local captains, and it had a profound impact on him. He would soon travel the country in support of combat veteran awareness, which is when he realized just how important the Manhattan Cup really was in terms of fostering life after service. “This is a different event, this is like completely different, it’s just a whole other level,” Gil told me, remarking on the caliber of people that attend every year, and the very reason that captains and anglers participate.
As Gil told me, combat vets don’t just go on the trip, they ask questions, and they learn. “Seeing everything that goes into running the boats, the engines and fuel mileage, the chart mapping that they did, that’s when I was like, ‘hey I have that military skillset’ – little things like that pieced together where I was like, pieces of me are dying that still could be used,” Gil said, describing how he was able to use his own military line map skills to chart fish ambush points and learn more about reading the water by fishing with Crescitelli and others.
“The military skillset is perfect for tournament fishing, a lot of people don’t know that,” said Gil, adding “my whole goal was to keep doing the Cup, and having other guys connect on the boat…there are a lot of pieces in you that still are useful.”
Healing Waters
Manhattan Cup tournament co-chair Gary Caputi calls Gil an unsung hero, and a beacon of hope and peace for his fellow brothers in arms. “Going through the unimaginable trials he did makes it possible for him to bring light to fellow warriors experiencing what he overcame,” Caputi said, while adding “Nico is the shining example of why Frank and I continue to grow the Manhattan Cup and with the evolution of the Fin Chaser Warriors Outdoors it has become so much more than just one day.”
| HONORING AMERICA’S HEROES |
| The Fisherman Magazine is a proud sponsor of the Manhattan Cup, and honored to have been recognized by tournament organizers over the years, including lifetime achievement awards to the late Fred Golofaro (2021) and Capt. John Raguso (2025). Use the QR code on your cellphone for exclusive video on the 24th annual Manhattan Cup held on Friday, June 6, 2025 with several dozen American heroes enjoying a day of catch and release striper fishing in the shadow of Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan. |
With financial support from the Manhattan Cup, Gil continues to expand the reach of Fin Chasers Warriors through veterans programs in the Pocono Mountains near Lackawaxen and Wallenpaupack like archery, fly tying and fishing. They continually expand on get-togethers and events, now working with the Lacawac Sanctuary Foundation in Lake Ariel, PA and their Environmental Educator and Veterans & Frontline Initiative Manager Rich Arthur. A self-described bug enthusiast, Arthur himself is an Army veteran who draws upon on his military experience and background in environmental science to work with veterans and military-connected individuals.
“Our veteran program started up about a year ago,” said Arthur, describing his work with the Lacawac Sanctuary Foundation as a way of transitioning combat vets to volunteerism through their At Ease program. Under Arthur’s guidance, veterans work with community partners to support conservation, scientific research, and environmental education.
“I’m trying to make it as appealing as I can, but we want to be education-based, conservation-based, so we’re going to have some veterans come out, we’re going to train them up to work with the high school groups. It’s going to give them the opportunity for that need to do something,” Arthur said. Through hands-on participation, veterans contribute directly to scientific discovery, habitat stewardship, and public engagement.
This initiative works with vets to engage with the natural world while applying their skills, experience, and teamwork to projects that sustain Lacawac’s 749 acres of forests, wetlands, and glacial lake. In turn, the vets are able to learn valuable life skills while connecting with others going through the same post traumatic recovery. “Because when you sit there and twiddle your thumbs, your mind goes places you don’t want it to,” Arthur said.
Many combat vets like Nico Gil are introduced to fly tying as a way of connecting the mind and fingers on a singular purpose. It’s not so much a distraction from the memories of war, but a way of channeling the mind and body together towards discovery and creation. The leap from understanding the ecosystem and tying that lifelike looking fly, to actually being able to fish it successfully, is all just a part of the overall transition to purpose.
As Gil said, “It’s not just fishing, it’s fishing as force for good.”
