PORTLAND, Maine – For seasoned fisherman Damon Sacco, the mystery lurking beneath the Massachusetts waves was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. After hours of a grueling battle, what emerged from the ocean depths wasn’t just any catch—it sparkled like a blue-hued spaceship rising to the surface.
Witnesses to the aquatic spectacle, Sacco, an experienced charter fishing boat captain, initially suspected a colossal shark when he saw the towering fin cutting through the water. His heart raced at the possibility.
“At first sight, it seemed to me like a massive shark,” Sacco recalled. “Yet, upon closer inspection, I realized that fin was pointed. I thought, no way could it be a marlin—it was far too large.”
In an incredible twist, Sacco and his crewmate, Walter Chapman, managed to reel in what may be the largest Atlantic blue marlin ever snagged off the U.S. East Coast. After the epic endeavor, they brought the staggering 1,260-pound (571.5 kilograms), 11-foot (335 cm) fish ashore in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
The captured leviathan nearly broke records, weighing just 142 pounds (64.4 kilograms) short of the standing world record for an Atlantic blue marlin, a title claimed by a catch off Brazil in 1992, as documented by the International Game Fish Association.
To catch such a huge fish off New England might be even more remarkable, said Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab and an associate professor at the university’s marine sciences school. The water is too cold for them in the Northeast most of the year, making the window to catch a big one very narrow.
The fish’s head was on its way to the UMaine lab to determine its age, said Golet, who speculated that it could be in the range of 25 to 30 years.
“I don’t suspect there will be a whole lot of blue marlin caught in the Atlantic in general that are going to top 1,200 pounds for the next several years,” he said.
On the day of the catch, Sacco’s charter boat, Castafari, was fishing Atlantis Canyon, an underwater canyon on the edge of the continental shelf about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off Cape Cod. The highly migratory blue marlin is a seasonal visitor to the area, Golet said.
The battle with the marlin took about three hours and was fought on rod and reel by Chapman. Sacco said his role for most of the adventure was to “drive the bus around and yell at people.” He added that the fish left a couple of holes in the boat’s transom with its bill that he considers “war marks.”
Chapman, a retiree and lifelong fisherman from Plymouth, said the meat of the fish was divided among about a dozen people, and he’s currently looking up recipes for what to do with it. He said the marlin is unquestionably the biggest fish he’s ever fought on a line, and some of it’s probably destined for fish chowder.
“I wasn’t going to eat a 1,200 pound fish all by myself,” Chapman said.
When the boat returned to the docks, a crowd was waiting, and weighing the fish became a brief spectacle. Onlooker Katie Curran of Falmouth said it was spectacular.
“People fish their entire lives and never come close to a catch like this,” Curran said. “Hats off to Captain Damon Sacco and the crew on the catch of a lifetime.”
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.