Posted on 08/22/2026 5:03:00 AM PDT by dennisw
Two longtime Massachusetts fishermen initially thought they were reeling in a shark, but instead they caught a 1,200-pound marlin, believed to be the biggest of its kind ever hauled in on the East Coast.
Damon Sacco, a seasoned charter fishing boat captain from the Bay State had been fishing for hours with his client on Wednesday when he caught a glimpse of a giant fin breaking the water’s surface about 100 miles off Cape Cod, MA.
At first, Sacco thought it was a massive shark but then he “got a better look at it and thought, dang, that thing’s pointed” and assumed it was “too big for a marlin,” he recalled.
To his surprise, the fisherman had caught a 1,260-pound Atlantic blue marlin that measured in at over 11 feet in length alongside his client, retiree Water Chapman.
Chapman, a lifelong fisherman from Plymouth, Mass., fought on rod and reel with the marlin for about three hours and said it was unquestionably the biggest fish he’s ever fought on a line before.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Did they break its spike? I remember Curt Gowdy and his Hollywood fished for marlins all the time on The American Sportsman.
…Hollywood friends…
Throw it baaaack! It looks poisonous. No, wait! First... hack it to pieces....
just to be sure.
It makes sense to donate the fish unless weight can be confirmed at the time catch and the fish is released.
“That dude has REALLY good eyesight!!!”
He was wrong. From that far away he might have seen the parascope of a Russian sub...maybe.
wy69
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Smoked marlin is pretty tasty too.
When did shorts become so long? I remember watching basketball during the Larry Bird era and shorts were shorter.
Smart sub periscope designers ought to be paying attention to local fish species.
The age is estimated to be 25 to 30 years. I wonder how long they can live.
“Smart sub periscope designers ought to be paying attention to local fish species.”
With the muzzie mentality they might make them look like mines.
wy69
I’ve been a freshwater guy most of my life too, just recently transitioning to saltwater because I’m geographically able to now. But where I’ve been for the last 10 years in North Carolina, catfish and bass are what you catch in the ponds and lakes, and I can’t completely corroborate what you’re saying. Those gigantic, blues and channel cats, thrown back, as a Journal role you don’t want anything bigger than 18 inches because it’s gonna taste like mud.
Yuk
I just looked up what you were talking about, in AI says if you stay under 10 pounds you can largely avoid those, but I haven’t been able to catch a drum yet myself. Caught a whole bunch of Spanish miracle and blues this summer and ate all of them, although every single fish was probably under 20 inches. So unfortunately, I didn’t see anything like that that you were talking about.
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