FISH · Tournaments · July 2026
For three weeks every July, the center of the big-game universe stops being Palm Beach or Kona or Hatteras. It moves to a 21-square-mile rock in the middle of the North Atlantic.
Bermuda earns that every year. The 2026 Bermuda Triple Crown earned it in about four minutes.
The Series, For Insiders Who Haven’t Fished It
The Bermuda Triple Crown is three separate tournaments stacked back-to-back across July, with points following the boat from event to event. The 2026 edition ran the Bermuda Billfish Blast July 3–7, the Bermuda Big Game Classic July 10–14, and the Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament — the oldest billfish tournament on the island — July 17–21.
Win the series and you don’t just take cash. You take a set of one-of-a-kind gold Champion’s rings, awarded at the gala at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club on the final night. Up to five of them go out, which means the Captain and the Mates who put the fish in the spread get hardware too. That detail tells you everything about how this series is built.
There’s history in the water here. In 2024, local boat UnWined put a 1,268-pound blue marlin on the dock — a fish so big the crew had to tow it in because it would not fit aboard.
The island does not oversell itself. It just keeps producing.
Leg One: The Blast, and the Fourth of July That Lit the Fuse
Forty-seven teams opened the 2026 series in the Bermuda Billfish Blast, fishing for a purse of $1.29 million.
Capt. Jimmy Werling and Plane Simple took the overall title with 3,200 points and $324,533.33, riding momentum from their Custom vs. Production Shootout win in the Bahamas back in May. It was tight at the top — Builder’s Choice, led by Capt. Brent Gaskill and the defending 2025 Triple Crown champions, finished second with 3,000 points and $218,156.67. Two hundred points. That’s one release.
Juben rounded out the podium in third with 2,100 points and $53,260.
But the story of the week wasn’t the release race. It was Day One, which happened to land on the Fourth of July — and happened to coincide with the Blue Marlin World Cup. Bermuda put 50 teams in the worldwide event, many of them fishing the Blast at the same time. For one day, the island wasn’t a stop on the calendar. It was the calendar.
Bree set the early bar with a 617-pounder. That afternoon, Swish topped it with a 653-pound blue that held up as the largest fish of the tournament and earned the team $395,225 — and second place in the World Cup on time.
Miss Ma’am added the third qualifying blue, a 532-pounder on Day Two in the team’s first showing in Bermuda, finishing fifth overall with 2,032 points and $138,770. Bree landed 10th with 1,617 points and $98,505.
Game fish paid too. Angler Stone Dupree and TOP IT OFF took the winner-take-all heaviest tuna with a 172.9-pound yellowfin worth $31,875, and Hershel Martin aboard Bobojo weighed the heaviest wahoo at 43.3 pounds for $31,025.
Remember that boat name. It comes back.
Leg Two: The Big Game Classic, and Two Silent Nights at Barr’s Bay
The Bermuda Big Game Classic is the heavyweight of the series — 44 boats, a purse of $1,407,525, and a rule that changes how a crew thinks.
The Classic carries a 500-pound minimum on blue marlin. Clear it and the fish scores a point per pound. Miss it and you eat a 500-point penalty, plus two more points for every pound you came up short.
That rule turns every big bite into a decision with real money attached. Gaff a fish you’re not sure about and you can hand the tournament to somebody else.
So for two straight days, nobody blinked. Barr’s Bay Park sat empty. The crowds came down each evening on the rumors coming off the radio, and each evening the scale stayed quiet. Heading into the final day, it looked entirely possible the Classic would finish without a single qualifying blue marlin weighed.
Meanwhile, the release race was being won the unglamorous way.
Builder’s Choice — the 64-foot Jarrett Bay under Capt. Brent Gaskill — opened with three blue marlin releases for 1,500 points and then simply never stopped adding. Seven blue marlin releases, 3,500 points, and a $394,533 payout. No miracle day. No last-hour heroics. Just fish after fish after fish.
Bree, the 88-foot Merritt run by Capt. Kyle Liane, played the same hand and finished second with five blue marlin and a white — including a genuine buzzer-beater. Junior angler Carter Simmons got a blue released at 4:27 p.m. on the final day to lock down second and an $88,630 payout. Seventeen-year-old nerves, seven-figure stakes. That’s tournament fishing.
Capt. Sean Dooley and Viking 82 took third with 2,600 points and just under $60,000, built the same steady way — two blues and a white on the opening day, then more every session after.
Three boats on the podium, three teams that won by refusing to have a bad day.
Then the Scale Woke Up
Final afternoon. Two days of nothing.
Reel Priority called in a boated fish. Four minutes later, Bobojo called in one of their own.
Capt. Kris Cameron pushed Reel Priority for Hamilton Harbour. Bobojo did the opposite — stayed offshore, kept fishing, and waited to hear a number come over the radio before committing. Cold-blooded, and exactly right.
Angler Joshua Crockwell and Reel Priority hit Barr’s Bay first. Their blue went 570 pounds.
That number went out over the radio, and Bobojo turned for home.
By the time the boat came into the harbor, the crowd had rebuilt itself around the scale. The transom doors opened on a 621-pound blue marlin — the biggest fish of the tournament, and a check for $714,850. The largest payout in the history of the Bermuda Big Game Classic.
Two days of dead air, and then the whole thing detonated inside of one hour.
Builder’s Choice closed the week out by taking the Triple Crown Manufacturer’s Cup for Jarrett Bay, the winner-take-all shootout among teams representing the elite builders — Viking, Spencer, Merritt and Jarrett Bay among them. That added $8,000, bringing Gaskill’s total for the event to $402,533.34, plus bragging rights in every boatyard on the East Coast.
What the First Two Legs Actually Told Us
Three things worth carrying into your own season.
Consistency beats the hero fish. Builder’s Choice won the Classic without weighing anything. Seven releases, spread across three days. In a points series, the boat that never has a zero is nearly impossible to run down.
The penalty rule is a tactical weapon. Two full days of an empty scale wasn’t bad fishing — it was good judgment, fleet-wide. Every crew out there did the math on a 500-point hole and decided the fish in the water was worth more than the fish on the dock. Know your rules that cold and you fish differently.
Bermuda in July is still the deepest water in the sport. Forty-seven boats, then 44. Werling, Gaskill, Liane, Dooley, Cameron. Jarrett Bay, Merritt, Viking, Spencer. There is no soft heat in this fleet.
The 2026 series also ran under new tournament director Michelle Gaylord, who added the inaugural Taittinger & Tails Ladies-Only Shootout to the calendar — moved up a day to July 8 on weather. Growing a stacked series without diluting it is hard. This one looks like it worked.
The Crown
The Sea Horse Anglers Club Billfish Tournament — the oldest jewel in the series, dating to 1973 — closed the 2026 Triple Crown on July 21, with the awards gala and the Champion’s rings handed out at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.
Builder’s Choice went into that final leg as the only boat to podium in both of the first two events: second in the Blast, first in the Classic. Defending champions, playing the exact style that wins a points series.
Official Sea Horse results and the crowning of the 2026 Bermuda Triple Crown champion have not been released publicly yet. We are not going to guess at them. Saltwater Insider will publish the final standings the moment official results are confirmed — with the real numbers, the real boats and the real Captains, the way we do it every time.
Whoever’s wearing that gold ring earned it in the toughest month of billfishing on the planet.
See you on the water.