Brandon McGirl landed a bluefin tuna so massive it shattered a New Hampshire record that had held firm since 2013.
The fisherman, aboard the Out of Line out of Rye Harbor on the New Hampshire Seacoast, was wrapping up an overnight trip Saturday when his reel finally clicked after hours of near-empty effort. Captain Jamie Savage had navigated rougher-than-expected conditions for the charter run through Savage Charters NH.
“It was very difficult conditions to try and fish. It was a little bit rougher than we were hoping for,” McGirl told WMUR.
The crew chased the fish for roughly a mile before wrestling it alongside the boat, too heavy to haul onto the deck. They towed the tuna back toward harbor, where the true scale of the catch revealed itself.
“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,” Savage said.
The scales settled on 1,116 pounds — more than 150 pounds above the prior state record. McGirl, still absorbing the haul, told WMUR what such a catch means in tuna-fishing circles.
“If you tuna fish for long time, to catch a 1,000-pound fish, is, I mean, it’s something that you dream of.”
News of the catch reached Concord by Sunday. Gov. Kelly Ayotte weighed in on Facebook with a blunt endorsement of the feat.
“Now THAT is a catch,” she wrote, sharing WMUR’s report.
The tuna fell just shy of the national mark. The largest bluefin on record in U.S. Waters — a 1,142-pound, 12-ounce giant caught off Block Island, Rhode Island, by J. Dempsey in September 1981 — still stands about 27 pounds heavier, according to On The Water.
McGirl told Foster’s Daily Democrat he will be paid by check later and does not yet know the final sale price. The fish itself may travel as far as Japan, though its tail will remain at Rye Harbor as a permanent marker of the day.
The haul arrives weeks after San Diego fishermen boated a bluefin estimated at 500 pounds whole, with a dressed weight of 446 pounds — then touted as the largest ever caught on rod and reel.
McGirl’s catch was not the only monster fish making headlines this season. An Atlantic blue marlin believed to weigh 1,260 pounds was recently caught off the East Coast, potentially breaking that region’s record.
The tuna will be sold commercially, with its tail preserved at the harbor as a souvenir of the record-setting day.