In a remarkable fishing expedition, two Massachusetts fishermen managed to reel in what is potentially the largest Atlantic blue marlin caught off the East Coast. The fishing duo, Damon Stacco and his client Walter Chapman, initially thought they were battling a shark.
The day began without success until Stacco, aboard his boat the Castafari, spotted a distinctive fin roughly 100 miles off Cape Cod. ‘A huge dorsal,’ as he described on Instagram. To his surprise, it turned out to be a blue marlin, an awe-inspiring catch. ‘The fin disappeared when I screamed,’ he wrote, capturing the moment his line was pulled by the powerful fish.
Walter Chapman and Damon Sacco, captain of the Castafari, shared a moment with their enormous blue marlin catch off the Massachusetts coast.
Featuring a certified weight of 1,260 pounds, this catch was recorded on an IGFA certified scale in Falmouth. Stacco labeled it ‘a gift from the Gods,’ setting a new Massachusetts state record and potentially for the Western Atlantic. The world record for the Atlantic blue marlin stands at 1,402 pounds, captured off Brazil over three decades ago.
Stacco credited Chapman with handling most of the work during the catch, humorously describing his role as ‘driving the bus around and yelling at people.’
According to Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab, the rarity of such a catch is emphasized by the typically cold waters off Massachusetts. The marlin’s age is estimated to be between 25 to 30 years, verified by examining its head in Golet’s lab.
Golet noted that such large Atlantic blue marlins are exceptional, expecting few to surpass 1,200 pounds in the foreseeable future.
The giant fish left behind ‘war marks,’ evidenced by holes in the boat’s transom as described by Stacco. The marlin’s meat will be distributed among a dozen people, with Chapman quipping he couldn’t consume a 1,200-pound fish alone.