Record 1,174-Pound Blue Marlin Caught Off Eastern Long Island
It cost him five hours of hard work and one broken fishing rod, but Bill Sweedler landed a 14-foot, 1,174-pound blue marlin and won a place in New York record books.
The fish, hooked off Montauk Point on the eastern end of Long Island, easily surpassed the previous New York record of 940 pounds, recorded in 1981 and 1984, according to Art Woldt, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources.
Richard Berk, a spokesman for the Montauk Marine Basin, the marina from which Sweedler set out on Sunday, said Sweedler hooked the fish at 7 a.m.
Sweedler’s rod snapped halfway through the struggle, forcing him to switch from 80-pound tackle to 130-pound.
The fish jumped out of the water 10 times, “walking” across the surface on its tail, Berk said. Sweedler, 19, of Westport, Conn., finally mastered the marlin by noon.
The Atlantic blue marlin lives in the warm Gulf Stream, which flows past the New York coast. A 1,282-pound blue marlin, the world record, was caught in 1977 at St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a 1,560-pound black marlin, a different species, was caught in 1953, off the coast of Peru.
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