Kiwi’s giant tuna catch a world record

AUCKLAND – After a four-hour battle with a monster tuna, an exhausted New Zealand woman didn’t need to be told she’d just hauled in a record-breaker.

But Donna Pascoe still didn’t expect her huge trophy Pacific bluefin tuna, weighing in at 411.6kg, to ultimately win an international plaudit.

The fish, caught last year off the Three Kings Islands at the top of the North Island, was the largest caught by a female angler in New Zealand.

The tuna is twice the size of a tuna sold at a Japanese auction last year for US$1.09 million. By that standard, Pascoe’s fish could be have been worth up to $2 million at auction.

Now a panel of foreign judges have deemed the catch worthy of the prestigious Best World Record award, recently presented to the Auckland woman at the International Gamefish Association Awards in Florida.

Pascoe was “blown away” to have been chosen from more than 800 other candidates for the award, which covered the 2014 season and took a range of factors into account.

In her case, it was partly the dramatic conditions the tuna was landed in – the winds were blowing about 36 knots and the sea was rough when her reel quickly started shedding line that February morning.

Over the next few hours, she stubbornly fought to bring in the fish, which she at first figured was probably a huge blue or black marlin.

It wasn’t until it was wrenched in closer to her 17-metre boat Gladiator that Pascoe realised it was a Pacific bluefin tuna, rarely caught in that area.

American crews at the awards dinner, where she sat beside the association’s president, were fascinated by the tale.

“Everyone was coming up to me and saying, ‘how did you do it?’ They could only dream of catching a fish that big.”

At 411.6kg, the fish weighs twice as much as a baby elephant and could fill 3162 cans of tuna.

It blows the current world record for a fish caught on a rod of 335kg out of the water.

A fibreglass replica of the three-metre-long tuna will be mounted next week at Westhaven fishing tackle shop W.S. Laurie and Co in Auckland.

Donna explained: “We were originally going to have it smoked and shared around our friends, but then we were talked out of this as it was so monumental.”

Bluefin are the world’s largest tuna and can live for up to 40 years. Built for speed, they can dive up to 1200 metres and have retractable fins so they can seek out schools of herring, mackerel and eels.