Six anglers fishing aboard the Flat Harmful, an 80-foot Viking based mostly in Destin, Florida, lucked right into a ferocious chew on Wednesday from an 888-pound bluefin tuna. With fish boiling on the floor throughout them, the crew hooked and landed what was rapidly acknowledged as the biggest bluefin ever recorded off the Florida coast. Nonetheless, as a result of a couple of angler fought the large fish, it doesn’t qualify as a file.
This was the primary time the crew had taken the brand new Viking out, Captain George Gill informed the Destin Log. Becoming a member of Gill onboard have been the boat’s proprietor Warren Williams, together with Eddy Griffith, Dennis Bennet, John Balters, and Kole Melancon.
The anglers ran 68 miles offshore to work round some floating “fish aggregating units” — that are massive, man-made floating objects designed to draw tuna, dolphin, and different fish. They caught just a few small tuna earlier than the floor erupted with an enormous faculty of bluefins feeding on high.
“There have been a whole lot of [bluefins],” Gill stated. “The varsity was huge, and so they have been all the identical [size] of fish.’
Gill eased the Viking boat into the college, providing them small tuna baits produced from the fish they’d already caught. They hooked two large tuna in a row however broke them off every time. Round 1 p.m., they hooked a 3rd large bluefin and pinned an outsized circle hook within the nook of its mouth.
The floor strike was an unbelievable factor to see, Griffith stated. When the fish sucked down their bait, it produced a gap that “appeared like a Russian submarine was attacking.”
“It was unbelievable – that’s burned in my reminiscence perpetually,” he stated.
Williams was first on the rod, however he finally wore out and gave it up. The fish stored boring deep, and he wasn’t gaining a lot line again on the reel, which was spooled with 100-pound check. Melancon took the rod subsequent, however he finally handed it onto the others aboard the Flat Harmful.
The tuna fought so exhausting that Gill stated it died about an hour into the battle. He thinks the fish should have gotten its tail wrapped within the fishing line.
“So, we spent 4 hours, inches at a time, getting that factor up,” Gill stated.
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They lastly hauled the tuna aboard round 7 p.m. and returned to Destin by 9 p.m. The tuna was so huge that the anglers had a tough time getting it via the open stern door and as much as the scales on the dock. An onlooker posted movies of their wrestle on Fb, together with a number of pictures displaying how large the tuna was.
The bluefin measured 110 inches, or greater than 9 toes, lengthy and weighed 888 kilos on the size. Had just one angler reeled it in, the fish would have simply damaged the standing state file for bluefin tuna, an 826.5-pounder caught in 2017.
