By all accounts, standards, and points of view, 2014 was a banner year for sport fishing enthusiasts in Costa Rica. The release counts from the country’s various billfish tournaments were staggering, further solidifying the case that Costa Rica offers the world’s best bill fishing.  Besides the hard-to-believe fish counts, what is perhaps even more impressive is that these major tournaments were held from January to June further proving that you can catch plenty of marlin and sailfish any month of the year.  As they say “the stats don’t lie“, so let’s review Costa Rica’s 2014 Fishing Tournaments.

The famous Los Suenos Resort & Marina always hosts three annual billfish tournaments, but this year they changed the format slightly.  Previously there was a Marlin Invitational in December and then the two-leg Los Suenos Signature Billfish Series held between January and March each year.  This year they decided to do away with the Marlin Invitational and created a three-leg billfish tournament, aptly named the Los Suenos Signature Triple Crown.

Leg I – Jan 23-25, 2014

The three-day total was 2,171 billfish released (2,160 sailfish, 11 marlin), which annihilated the previous record set in January 2013 of 1,412 billfish.  That is an average of 17+ billfish per day/per boat for the 42 boats!

Leg II – Feb 27-March 1, 2014

The Leg II totals were down slightly from the records set last month, but still pretty amazing with 1,060 billfish released (1,055 sailfish, 5 marlin.  Each of the 39 boats averaged 9+ releases per day.

Leg III – March 12-15, 2014

The third leg of the Los Suenos Triple Crown finished with a three three-day total of 1,847 billfish – an average of nearly 16+ billfish per day for the 37 competing boats.

Slightly further south the Marina Pez Vela in Quepos held its third annual Quepos Billfish Cup from February 20-23.  This is a much smaller and more local tournament than the international tournaments held at Los Suenos, but that doesn’t mean it is lacking in talent.  In three days the eleven competing boats released a total of 399 sailfish and two marlin.

In June the Marina Papagayo, the newest and perhaps most luxurious marina in Costa Rica, hosted the Presiential Papagayo Cup from the 5th to the 8th.  This was the 4th annual tournament at the new marina, which saw Tranquilo take home the trophy as top boat with 2,000 points, including 5 marlin on the last day!

Last but not least, the biggest international tournament of the year came back to fish in Quepos, Costa Rica for the second year in a row.  The Offshore World Championship is an invite-only tournament featuring the top teams from all over the world including teams from five different continents.  The 64 teams from around the world released an astonishing 2,739 billfish and landed 79 dorados in the four-day tournament. That’s an average of nearly 685 billfish released and 20 Dorado caught each day.  One thing to keep in mind is that Costa Rica mandates the use of circle hooks for billfish, which many anglers around the world are not used to.

The four-day tournament was held at the new Marina Pez Vela in Quepos, Costa Rica from April 6-10, 2014. What makes the international championship even more unique is the way it’s run – instead of fishing on your own boat the top public charter boats from all over Costa Rica are used. That means that when you come fishing in Costa Rica you’ll fish with many of the same captains & boats that competed in this tournament. To even the playing field, each team fishes on a new boat every day of the tournament. Points were awarded as such: 500 points for any marlin, 200 points for any sailfish, and weight points for any game fish (dorado, wahoo, tuna) over 25 pounds. As always, the conservation efforts prevail in Costa Rica as the tournament is strictly catch and release on billfish and only non-offset circle hooks were used.

From the very start, the championship got off to a roaring start. The 64 boats powered out of Marina Pez Vela looking for their hot spot inside the 45-mile fishing boundary, and fortunately it wasn’t too hard to find one. The final tally on Day 1 was three blue marlin, 773 sailfish, and 27 dorados. As if that wasn’t enough to blow these international anglers away, Costa Rica upped the ante on Day 2 as three more marlin, 18 dorados, and a whopping 827 sailfish were released. The fish stayed hungry through Day 3 as one more marlin, 18 dorados, and another 707 sailfish were released. Day four saw the game fish tire, or maybe it was the anglers and their thumbs, as “only” two marlin, 16 dorados, and 417 sailfish were released.

The 2014 Offshore World Championship’s winning team, Luanda Sailfish Classic, hails from Angola and finished with 15,263.6 points. In addition to bragging rights and an invite to the 2015 championship, they also brought home championship rings, trophies, Shimano Reels, Garmin Elite Virb Cameras, Guy Harvey limited edition prints, AFTCO Championship Apparel, Flor De Cana Premium Rum, and a Yeti Cooler. The real winner was once again Costa Rica as they showed the world why it is arguably the top offshore sport fishing destination in the world with an incredible fish count of 9 marlin, 79 dorados over 25 lbs, and 2,735 sailfish in just four days. Keep in mind that’s just the number of fish successfully released, but as many of these anglers aren’t used to fishing with circle hooks and some teams are tarpon fishermen the fish count incredibly could have been even higher! According to our captains, if you take the number of billfish actually released you could double or even triple the amount of bites they had and lost!