Congratulations to the team of Florian Biziere, Steve Harries and Geoff Bell, representing Kenya’s Watamu Fishing Festival—they are the 2022 Costa Offshore World Champions. They had an incredible day of fishing on the fourth and final day of the tournament, releasing eight video-verified blue marlin aboard Fire Fly to take home the big win. With each blue marlin worth 500 points, they were able to surpass the leading teams from the previous days and remain atop the leaderboard by the call for lines out. For the four-day event, the team amassed an amazing 25 billfish releases—11 blue marlin and 14 sailfish—for a total of 8,300 points. Harries and Biziere finished in first and second place in the top angler standings, each with 3,700 points.
Representing the 2002 Offshore World Champions, the team of John Lloyd, Jessey Rudolph, James Scott Laney, Buddy Moore and Frank Schaaf held onto second place, finishing the tournament with 32 sailfish and three blue marlin releases; combined with the weight of their dorado, they tallied 7987.2 points. Rudolph had the event’s largest dorado at 58.4 pounds as well.
Another team making a big move on Day Four was the Croatian entry, representing the Giricic 2021 tournament. Tibor Mladinc, Bosko Stipoljev, Boris Gruica and Pero Sare released 11 sailfish and two blue marlin on the final day to land in third place overall with a four-day total of 7,100 points.
For the tournament, the 37 teams and 163 anglers, representing 18 nationalities, released 673 billfish: 606 sailfish, 65 blue marlin, one black marlin and one striped marlin, for an average of just over 18 billfish per team.
