UK angler Kevin Gardner landed his first blue marlin on Monday and it was a doozy.
Fishing off Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, a destination known for its "granders," aka 1,000-pound marlin, Gardner boated one of the biggest blue marlin ever caught, an incredible 1,320-pounder.
It was said to be the second-largest blue marlin taken at Ascension Island, behind a 1,337-pounder landed in 2002. By comparison, the IGFA all-tackle world record for Atlantic blue marlin is 1,402 pounds caught off Brazil in February 1992. The all-tackle Pacific blue marlin is 1,376 pounds.
By any standards, the fish was huge.
Harmattan skipper Olaf Grimkowski reported on his Facebook page that the fish hit around 1:30 p.m. at the southwest side of the island.
[Related: the biggest catches on a kayak.]
"In the distance, we saw her lunging and she looked promising," he wrote. "After three surface runs she went a bit deeper and for the last 90 minutes Kevin fought her [into the] sunset."
Gardner got the fish to the boat four times and four times wireman Emil Ruud had to let go of the leader. Finally, after three hours, Ruud, wiring his first marlin, managed to leader the fish, and it was gaffed.
The scale master reported the fish weighing 1,320 pounds and measuring 149 inches from the tip of the lower jaw to the inner fork of the tale with a girth of 83 inches.
"We had a pretty slow season until now when it comes to marlin fishing, but it seems to be true that when you have a long hard time, you are saving up for something special," Grimkowski wrote. "Well, we had our special day today." LINK
Top photo courtesy of Olaf Grimkowski's Facebook page. Grimkowski is in the blue shirt. Bottom photo courtesy of Emil Ruud's Facebook page. Ruud is at left, Grimkowski at right.
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