BATON ROUGE, La. (WVLA) — A day with family and friends ended with a large catch by one Louisiana fisherman. Thibodaux native Lee Grafton said he caught a 350.8-pound broadbill swordfish while fishing in the Gulf on Friday, June 6.

Grafton said he, along with his friends, son, and his son’s friends, all ventured out into the Gulf from Grand Isle. He said they were “fishing on a 33 Encore custom aluminum catamaran made by Encore Boat Works in Sorrento” when he says he hooked the swordfish with a Daiwa MP 3000 electric reel.

“The bait was a rigged squid on a 200-pound leader with a 300-pound test wind on the leader,” said Grafton.

He says he first hooked the fish around 9:40 a.m. but didn’t reel it in until 1:15 p.m., after spending the last 90 minutes manually cranking the reel.

He said the hardest part about catching the large fish was keeping it from breaking off. Grafton said the weight was hard to deal with and prevented them from gaining any ground. He explained he had to use a glove and hand line to make any progress.

Grafton said they cleaned the fish and will give some of it away.

The plan is to mount the sword and possibly get a replica made of the entire fish, says Grafton.

Grafton mentioned he has caught bigger fish before, but the broadbill swordfish would have been the top in the state by 40 pounds. He said that the fish can’t be weighed to determine whether it set a state record, because he used an electric reel.

The Louisiana man has a love for fishing and you can see it on his local TV fishing show called “Keep on Castin.”