2023 Standings:
Capt. Tony Carrizosa // Team Galati, Fish Tank // 500 pts.
- Pelagic Rockstar Offshore Tournament, 1st Place, 500 pts.
Capt. Everett Lance Hightower // Vaquero // 300 pts.
- Pelagic Rockstar Offshore Tournament, 2nd Place, 300 pts.
Capt. John Brennan // Game Plan // 100 pts.
- Pelagic Rockstar Offshore Tournament, 3rd Place, 100 pts.
2022 International Division Captain of the Year
Capt. Pete Zook
Sea Striker // 1,050 points
Bermuda Billfish Blast
2nd Place – 300 pts.
Sea Horse Angler’s Club Billfish Tournament
1st Place – 500 pts.
Bermuda Triple Crown Series
Overall Champion – 250 pts.
By Seth Dotson
The 2022 fishing season kicked off with a complicated course of musical boats for Capt. Pete Zook, his owner, and crew. Zook, whose family has been in the sportfishing business for several generations, took it all in stride and ultimately to great success.
“We have two boats,” says Zook, whose granddad charter fished out of New York and later moved to Morehead City, North Carolina, where he started teaching captain courses. His dad charter fished since a teenager, and Zook was born and raised doing the same. He’s fished full-time since age 17, and he’s 39 years old now. “We have our original 61-foot Jarrett Bay, Sea Striker, and then we have a new 55-footer.”
Zook says the team hoped to run the entire season on the brand-new 55.
“We started in December and got the 55 and spent until May trying to get it in the water in time to bring to Bermuda to leave there, but we weren’t able to do that in time,” Zook laments.
Therefore, they unexpectedly had to fish the majority of the 2022 season on the older, larger Sea Striker. Built in 1999 as Hull No. 23 and Zook’s primary fishing vessel for the past seven years, the 61’ Sea Striker has enjoyed a legendary reputation among its fishing circles. It again proved its prowess this year.
“It’s kind of a legendary boat, and it’s one that I’ve always wanted to work on because its owners won first in the Big Rock Tournament,” explains Zook. “After we did a repower, we won about $1,200,000 in the Big Rock, coming in second place. We lost first by about 3/10 of a pound. So it’s a pretty lucky boat. It’s older, but we repowered it with twin-cylinder MAN engines three years ago.”
Adrian Holler is the Sea Striker’s owner, and fishes on Zook’s team as an angler. Other members of Zook’s crew include first mate Morris McGahey, Dave Pfeiffer, Christian Bedsworth and Rom Whitaker.
“He’s a good friend of ours,” said Zook, referring to Whitaker. “He runs a charter business out of Hatteras called The Release.”
Zook and his team had won the 2022 Bermuda Triple Crown Series.
(Photo/Out Your Front Door)
The action started with a second-place finish in the Bermuda Billfish Blast, July 3-7, where Holler reeled in a blue each of the three days of fishing. A white marlin release three minutes before lines out on the final day boosted Sea Striker to runner-up on the podium with 1,600 points.
“In the Bermuda Billfish Blast, we lost out on a first place by about 10 points, because we had a killed fish,” explains Zook. “We actually caught more fish than anyone else in the tournament, but the killed fish put us back.”
In the second tournament, the Bermuda Big Game Classic held on July 14-18, consistency paid off, with the Sea Striker team releasing another three blues. Though ending 7th on the scoreboard, the effort moved the team into the Series lead with 3,100 points heading into the final leg.
The best was yet to come as the team won the Sea Horse Angler’s Club Tournament in Bermuda, July 21-25, with six blue and one white marlin released for 3,100 points. The three-tournament total of 6,200 points secured Sea Striker’s 2022 Bermuda Triple Crown Billfish Championship victory.
“Going into the Sea Horse Angler’s Tournament, we were really hoping for the best,” Zook says. “We set out on the first day and ended up catching three blue marlin and a white. We then caught one on the second day and then two blues on the third day. I’ve been going to Bermuda every year since 2008. This is the first year I’ve won the Triple Crown.”
2021 International Division Captain of the Year
Capt. Tony Carrizosa
Team Galati // 750 pts.
Los Sueños, Leg 3
1st Place – 500 pts.
Los Sueños Series
Overall Champions – 250 pts.
“I grew up in Miami,” says Florida native and current Costa Rica resident Tony Carrizosa. “Obviously, we’re surrounded by water, so I took to the water.”
Carrizosa, the recipient of the coveted title of 2021 Captain of the Year, Release Marine International Division, and is a man of many talents, having a multifaceted career to show for it. In addition to enjoying the illustrious status of sportfishing captain, Carrizosa specializes in the marketing of sport yachts to a variety of customers, among whom include his colleagues and competitors.
He works as a salesman for Galati Yachts, and is good friends with founder Carmine Galati, Sr., who joins Carrizosa as a regular member of his fishing crew.
“We started fishing as a team together in 2009,” Carrizosa says, speaking of himself and his crew. Other crew members of his include engineers and salesmen from both Galati Yachts and Viking Yachts. “The president of Viking Yachts, the president of Galati Yachts, and I are a team. They build the boats, we sell them, and we fish together.”
In addition to his manager, Galati, Carrizosa’s crew during the 2021 fishing season boasted a prestigious team of experienced anglers, among whom were John LaGrone, brothers Drew and Erik McDowell and Viking Yachts CEO and president, Pat Healey.
Carrizosa emphasizes that his role as captain entails more than just winning tournaments. As a representative of Galati Yachts, part of his job is to sell his company’s image.
“We always have a different boat, because we’re boat builders,” he says. “Every year we have a new boat that we’re promoting, fishing on and selling at the same time.”
This year’s model is named the Team Galati and is a brand-new 2021 Viking 58 Convertible, powered by a set of MTU M96L 10-cylinder engines.
“I myself am not a boat builder,” emphasizes Carrizosa. “I’m a salesman, but I’ve been a boat captain since I was 18 and have held a captain’s position since 2002.”
He was not yet a team member of Galati Yachts and spent much of his early career working from a variety of different boats, including a custom 63-foot American Yacht called the Stephanie Lee, which he worked on for eight years.
“I started traveling on other boats around the Gulf of Mexico, the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and Venezuela,” he says. “In early 2001, I made the trip across the Panama Canal, and I’ve been on the Pacific ever since.”
After becoming a permanent resident of Costa Rica, Carrizosa would be one step closer to winning a title in the COTY International Division. Since the inception of his competitive fishing career in the mid-90s, he has focused his exertions as captain on the Signature Triple Crown tournament, which debuted that same year, and is based out of Costa Rica’s Los Sueños Resort and Marina.
The tournament is divided up into three episodes, called legs, which take place between January and March, and are spaced apart by intervals of about three weeks. For the 2021 season, Leg I took place from January 20 to 23, Leg II ran from February 24 to 27, and Leg III began on March 17 and concluded March 20.
“Normally, we start fishing about five days before the tournament,” says Carrizosa. “We need to get in rhythm with how the fish are moving, where they’re at, etc. Our anglers practice getting bites to get familiar with fishing again.”
Carrizosa and his team claimed victory for the third leg as well as the overall tournament, winning, as a result, the Release Marine lnternational Division, Captain of the Year award. Because the Signature Triple Crown’s 2020 season was abruptly cut short by the COVID-19 lockdown in March, before the conclusion of the season’s third leg, Carrizosa’s 2021 win counted toward both this year and last year’s prizes. Overall, Carrizosa and his team managed to accumulate a total of $316,000 in prize money over a single fishing season.
Past Winners:
- 2021 Capt. Tony Carrizosa // Team Galati // 750 pts.
- 2020 Capt. Edward “Cookie” Murray // Auspicious // 1,350 pts.
- 2019 Capt. Jason Parker // Reel Steel // 1,550 pts.
- 2018 Capt. Greg DiStefano // El Suertudo // 900 pts.
- 2017 Capt. Russell Sinclair // Wave Paver // 2,150 pts.
- 2016 Capt. Victor Julio Lopez // Tranquilo // 2,100 pts.
- 2015 Capt. Russell Sinclair // Wave Paver // 1,950 pts.
- 2014 Capt. Rob Moore // Fa-La-Me // 1,650 pts.
Sanctioned Events:
- Pelagic Rockstar Offshore Tournament
- Los Suenos Signature Billfish Series, Leg 1
- Los Suenos Signature Billfish Series, Leg 2
- Los Suenos Signature Billfish Series, Leg 3
- Los Suenos Series
- Quepos Billfish Cup
- The Masters Tournament
- Marina Casa de Campo Open
- White Marlin Roundup
- Custom Shootout
- Casa de Campo International Blue Marlin Classic
- Production vs. Custom Shootout
- International Cap Cana Billfish Shootout
- Baker’s Bay Invitational
- Pelagic Triple Crown Fishing Tournament
- Bermuda Billfish Blast
- World Cup
- Bermuda Billfish Release Cup
- Bermuda Big Game Classic
- Sea Horse Angler’s Billfish Tournament
- Bermuda Triple Crown
- Bisbee’s East Cape Offshore Tournament
- Scrub Island Invitational
- San Juan International Billfish Tournament
- Los Cabos Billfish Tournament
- Bisbee’s Los Cabos Offshore Tournament
- Bisbee’s Black & Blue Marlin Jackpot Tournament
- Chub Cay Invitational
- Walker’s Cay Invitational
