Five Bermudians have beaten some of the world’s best anglers to finish fourth at the 2025 Offshore World Championships.

Chris Osborne, Joe Vieira, Tony Cabral, Scott Constable and Daniel Renaud achieved an invite to one of the sport’s biggest competitions by catching the largest fish, a 1,268lb Atlantic blue marlin, at the Bermuda Big Game Classic in June last year.

Their prize was the chance to become world champions in Costa Rica, where more than 30 teams from around the globe competed across three days to try to produce the largest haul.

In unfamiliar waters populated with unfamiliar sailfish and with little preparation, Bermuda’s finest were up against it. But they showed their class to win a prize for the biggest catch on day two before finishing fourth overall, outperforming all their pre-angling expectations.

“Our only real hope is that we didn’t want to finish last,” Osborne said.

“We didn’t think we would be much better than that but we wanted to represent Bermuda well and we thought a top-ten finish was at the high end of our expectations, so to come out fourth has us feeling pretty good.

“None of us had even seen a sailfish before. It was a big learning curve but we put in the work and we got it done.”

The team had one just day to experiment before the start of the championships in an attempt to hone the necessary technique required for success in Costa Rican waters.

“Before the tournament started we booked a charter just to learn and the tournament advised that if you hadn’t fished this style before that you should do that,” Osborne said.

“Looking back we probably should have done it more than once because it was a culture shock. We were still learning on the first day of competition but we adapted and had a good time, although we were serious about what we do.”

The competition rules pushed the five men out of their comfort zone as not only did they have to perfect new skills, their talents had to be employed on three different boats on successive days.

But for Cabral, the constant changing proved that the men had the ability to adapt quickly and think fast.

“The first day of competition was only our second day in the water and without day one we would have won the tournament for sure,” Cabral said.

“The big difference to this tournament than what we are used to is that we fished a different boat every day, so you pull out of a hat which three boats you are going to fish and every day is different.

“Each boat has a different set-up, some have five lines, some have four, so every day you have to adjust. In Bermuda, we run our own boat and fish in that every day so we know exactly what we are doing.

“All the foreigners we compete against in Bermuda bring their own boats, so they are doing it their own way. Here, we were in the hands of a captain who is guiding the boat to wherever he wants to take us, a mate that helps us set up all the lures and we do the rest of it from there. That’s what makes it quite exciting.”

While producing the biggest catch on day two was “the icing on the cake” for Osborne, the chance to shoot the breeze and talk angling with the best in the world was one of the highlights of the week for Joe Vieira.

“It was great to meet different people from around the world,” he said.

“We met guys from Australia, New Zealand, Peru. There were three teams from the US, a team from Spain and we talked to all of them.

“They had the same problems as us with the fish. It was crazy how you had to feed the fish in order to catch it. It’s so interesting to talk about what they fish, how they catch and how different it is to Bermuda.”

It was a blue marlin that got the team to Costa Rica but for many boats at the world championships that fish proved elusive. It was only the Bermudians who managed to bag at least one blue marlin a day, much to the delight of Cabral.

“There were about 180 sailfish caught compared with four to seven blue marlin,” Cabral said. “But we got one blue marlin every day, which is what we are used to in Bermuda, so we were all really excited with that.”