Keith Lusher 08.25.26
A fishing trip roughly 100 miles off Cape Cod turned into a record-breaking day when a Massachusetts charter crew landed a 1,260-pound Atlantic blue marlin, believed to be the largest ever caught along the U.S. East Coast.
Captain Damon Sacco was running the Castafari near Atlantis Canyon when the crew found birds working over a school of fish. After catching several yellowfin tuna, Sacco noticed an enormous dorsal fin near the boat and initially thought a large shark had moved into the area.
“Then I got a better look at it and thought, dang, that thing’s pointed,” Sacco said. “But that’s too big for a marlin.”
Sacco quickly realized he was looking at an exceptionally large blue marlin, and moments later Walter Chapman, a lifelong fisherman from Plymouth, Massachusetts, was hooked into the fish.
Chapman spent roughly three hours fighting the marlin on rod and reel as it repeatedly jumped and made powerful runs away from the boat. At one point, the fish stripped line so quickly that Sacco had to turn the Castafari and follow it to keep Chapman from being spooled.
The crew eventually brought the marlin alongside the 45-foot boat, but its massive size created another problem. The fish was too large to fit completely inside the vessel, leaving a significant portion of it sticking through the tuna door during the trip back to Falmouth, Massachusetts.
By the time the Castafari reached MacDougall’s Cape Cod Marine Service, word of the catch had spread and a crowd had gathered to watch the weigh-in. Crews used a crane and heavy straps to lift the fish from the boat before placing it on a certified scale.
When the scale settled at 1,260 pounds, the catch easily surpassed the previous Massachusetts blue marlin record of 873 pounds set in 2015. It also topped a 1,228-pound North Carolina fish, making it the largest blue marlin reported from the East Coast.
The fish came within 142 pounds of the International Game Fish Association’s all-tackle Atlantic blue marlin world record, a 1,402-pound fish caught off Brazil in 1992.
The location of the catch also makes the fish unusual. Blue marlin prefer warmer waters and are seasonal visitors to the waters off New England, giving anglers a relatively short opportunity to encounter them.
Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab, estimated the fish could be between 25 and 30 years old. Its head was sent to the university, where researchers plan to examine its otoliths to determine its age.
The meat was later divided among members of the crew and others, while Chapman began looking for ways to prepare his share.
“I wasn’t going to eat a 1,200 pound fish all by myself,” Chapman said.
