This year, the Bermuda Triple Crown will celebrate 20 years of tournament fishing, along with every bit of the pulse-pounding adrenaline, passion, camaraderie and sheer enjoyment that comes with such a milestone. Along the way, there have been 1,000-plus-pound blue marlin weighed and lost, and millions of dollars in prize money awarded to the participants. The Triple Crown attracts the undisputed top names in the sport every year, the vast majority of whom spend the month of July chasing giant blues in the depths of these cerulean blue waters.
The grand dame of the three-tournament series—the Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament—was founded in 1973. Once a small gathering for passionate Bermudian blue marlin fishermen, it became the cornerstone of the Triple Crown after the introduction of the Bermuda Big Game Classic in 2001, and finally the Bermuda Billfish Blast in 2005, the annual Fourth of July event that rounded out the Triple Crown lineup. It was that same year when a fire at the local power plant turned out the lights—along with everything else—across the island for the first day of the Bermuda Big Game Classic. It didn’t matter for Bob team, though, as they landed the first and only grander blue marlin of the series at 1,023 pounds to win not only the Classic but the inaugural Bermuda Triple Crown. What a way to start.