Mark Rideout and his team from the United Kingdom won this year’s Blue Marlin World Cup, a worldwide winner-take-all blue marlin tournament held on July 4th. The team fished out of Madeira aboard Rideout’s Blue Makaira, a 33-foot Rodman, where they landed a 983-pound blue marlin. Incredibly, this was the fourth-largest blue marlin ever caught in World Cup history, surpassed only by the three thousand-pound-plus granders caught in 2010, 2004 and 1993. In another notable twist, Blue Makaira‘s Capt. Nuno was the deckhand on last year’s Blue Marlin World Cup winner, which was also caught out of Madeira.
And while there is only one winner in the World Cup, Blue Makaira was not entered in the optional Big Blue Challenge optional jackpot. That would be won by Stephanie Choate and her team on Reel Addiction with a 625-pound blue marlin. Choate and company fished out of Bermuda with Capt. “Curly” Cragin aboard his 48-foot Billy Holton charter boat. Choate won the Blue Marlin World Cup in 2014 with a 656-pound blue marlin she caught while fishing off Kona, Hawaii.
