iStockphoto / Kelly Dalling
- Team Blue Hunter won the 2021 Blue Marlin World Cup, a fishing tournamen that spans the entire globe on the same day
- The winning fish was a ‘grander’ 1,053-pound Blue Marlin caught in Cape Verdes which beat out over 120 teams fishing everywhere from the USA to Africa
- Read more Fishing articles here
The Blue Marlin World Cup is one of the coolest fishing tournaments on the planet. It takes place on the 4th of July all across the globe. With hundreds of teams spending thousands of dollars in hopes of catching the winning fish. This year’s winner was fishing out of Cape Verde off the coast of Mauritania and Senegal and they landed a 1,053-pound ‘grander’ blue marlin.
One thing that sets the Blue Marlin World Cup apart from most fishing tournaments is there’s only one target species. The Blue Marlin (hence the name). Boats aren’t out there trying to catch Yellowfin Tuna, Mahi Mahi, White Marlin, and other target species.
Also, teams are fishing all across the planet. They have an 8-hour window to fish wherever they want on July 4th. So one team might fish Key West or The Bahamas and another might be in Africa or off Portugal. And the winner takes home A LOT of money.
It looks like there were around 122 teams fishing in the 2021 Blue Marlin World Cup. The entry fee is $5,000 and there’s a $8,000 ‘Big Blue Challenge’ option where the winner of that prize pool takes home 80% (20% goes to tournament fees) of all that money. And teams must catch and weigh a 500-pound fish to qualify (minimum of 500lbs) but as you can see the winning fish is much larger. I’ll let you do the math on that 80% x entries for this fish but it’s a fork ton of cash.
Here’s a clip of this year’s winning ‘Grander’ coming into the weigh station in Cape Verde. It’s just a straight-up dinosaur of a fish.
And a close-up picture of the winning fish:
This year’s winner is this gargantuan 1,053-pound Grander Blue Marlin. Considerably larger than the 2020 Blue Marlin World Cup winning fish that weighed 964-pounds.
This marks the fourth ‘Grander’ caught in the Blue Marlin World Cup. The largest Blue Marlin caught in the tourney (to date) is a 1,195-pound Blue landed by Don Hunt in Bermuda back in 1993.