Six anglers fishing aboard the Flat Harmful, an 80-foot Viking primarily based in Destin, Florida, lucked right into a ferocious chunk 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. Nevertheless, as a result of multiple angler fought the large fish, it doesn’t qualify as a document.
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 had 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 devices” — that are giant, man-made floating objects designed to draw tuna, dolphin, and different fish. They caught a number of small tuna earlier than the floor erupted with an enormous faculty of bluefins feeding on prime.
“There have been tons of of [bluefins],” Gill mentioned. “The college was huge, and so they had been all the identical [size] of fish.’
Gill eased the Viking boat into the college, providing them small tuna baits made out of 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 big bluefin and pinned an outsized circle hook within the nook of its mouth.
The floor strike was an unbelievable factor to see, Griffith mentioned. When the fish sucked down their bait, it produced a gap that “seemed like a Russian submarine was attacking.”
“It was unbelievable – that’s burned in my reminiscence perpetually,” he mentioned.
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 arduous that Gill mentioned it died about an hour into the battle. He thinks the fish will need to have gotten its tail wrapped within the fishing line.
“So, we spent 4 hours, inches at a time, getting that factor up,” Gill mentioned.
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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 by way of the open stern door and as much as the scales on the dock. An onlooker posted movies of their battle on Fb, together with a number of images displaying how big 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 record for bluefin tuna, an 826.5-pounder caught in 2017.
