A New Hampshire fisherman has smashed the state record with a bluefin tuna weighing a whopping 1,116 pounds.
The fisherman, Brandon McGirl, caught his prize Saturday during an overnight fishing trip out of Rye Harbor near Portsmouth, near the state’s border with Maine, according to WMUR-TV.
McGirl’s catch is the biggest bluefin ever caught in New Hampshire waters, smashing the previous record by 154 pounds. The previous record had sat at the top of the chart since 2013, when the crew of the Salt Shaker out of New Castle, New Hampshire, landed a 92-pound bluefin. That catch broke the record of the 865-pounder caught in 2001.
“It was very difficult conditions to try and fish. It was a little bit rougher than we were hoping for,” McGirl admitted.
Indeed, the fishermen almost called off the expedition because they weren’t getting any bites.
But then it happened. “They never come when you expect them to come,” McGirl said.
The fish was so big they couldn’t even lift it out of the water, so they ended up trailing it back to the harbor. And the extent of their catch became clear when they docked.
“We lifted it out of the water and immediately knew it was way bigger than what we thought and bigger than anything either of us had seen before,” Captain Jamie Savage told the media.
The massive fish is now going to market, will fetch a pretty penny, and will likely end up in Japan.
McGirl is keeping the tail as a trophy to remind him of the monster fish.
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