At the end of three long, hot days of tournament fishing in March, the VHF radio came to life one last time. Tournament director Ashley Bretecher’s pleasant feminine voice rang out clearly: “Lines out, lines out. This concludes Leg Three of the 2023 Los Sueños Signature Triple Crown. Congratulations to the winners. Have a safe trip back to the dock.”
And with those words, the celebration began aboard the 64-foot Viking Team Galati—with eight marlin and 25 sailfish releases, they had not only won the third and final leg, but they had achieved the overall series championship victory as well, the team’s third since 2020. At the helm, Capt. Tony Carrizosa also achieved a personal milestone as the winningest captain in the 20-year history of the prestigious and highly competitive tournament series, with an incredible nine first-place victories, four runner-up finishes, two third-places, and four overall series titles. It’s a story of not only hard-fought success, but also the rise of a world-class destination in Costa Rica and a few takeaways for anyone who’s experienced the thrill of watching a lit-up billfish bang away at a teaser in a sport-fisher’s wake.
FROM PONDS TO A PROFESSION
Like a lot of youngsters growing up in the suburbs around Miami, Carrizosa picked up a love of fishing in the local ponds around Kendall, Florida. A few years later, he fished with his father on party boats, and then as an early teen, they began to charter their own boat, out of Key Colony Beach, just outside Marathon in the Florida Keys. “We fished on that boat for years with our family,” he says. “Steve gave me my first job as a mate during my summer break from high school in 1993. I spent a few summers doing that before I headed off to college. After the first semester, the phone rang one day, and I was heading back to the Keys to work for Steve and on several other boats. I never did make it back to school.” Carrizosa earned his captain’s license at 19 and hit the road.