Two Massachusetts fishermen spent three hours fighting what they initially thought was a shark before landing what may be the largest Atlantic blue marlin ever caught off the East Coast, according to Fox News.
Charter boat captain Damon Stacco and his client Walter Chapman were fishing roughly 100 miles off Cape Cod when Stacco spotted something unusual in the water. He described the moment on his Instagram page.
"Huge dorsal," he wrote. "Am I really seeing this? Four feet high but pointed. A blue hue flashed beneath it. Pecs? Holy s--- it's a marlin! The fin dissappeared [sic] when I screamed. I dropped back the rod beside me and the tip bounced. Line ripped from beneath my fingers."
Stacco told reporters he initially thought the fish was too big to be a marlin. The fish weighed in at 1,260 pounds on an IGFA certified scale in Falmouth. He called it a "gift from the Gods and new blue marlin Mass. state record and possibly for the Western Atlantic."
The catch fell just 142 pounds short of the world record, a 1,402-pound Atlantic blue marlin caught off Brazil 34 years ago.
Chapman did most of the physical work during the fight. Stacco, describing his own role on the charter boat Castafari, joked that his job was to "drive the bus around and yell at people."
Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab, said the catch is particularly remarkable given the water conditions. The waters off Massachusetts are too cold for blue marlin most of the year. Golet estimated the fish might be 25 to 30 years old, and its head was taken to his lab for confirmation.
"I don't suspect there will be a whole lot of blue marlin caught in the Atlantic in general that are going to top 1,200 pounds for the next several years," he said.
The fish left holes in the boat's transom, which Stacco called war marks. Chapman, described as a lifelong fisherman, said the meat would be divided among about a dozen people.
"I wasn't going to eat a 1,200-pound fish all by myself," he said.
