Capt. Jamie Savage and his lone fishing client Brandon McGirl left New Hampshire’s Rye Harbor the night of Oct. 2 for a bluefin tuna fishing trip off the New England coast.
“We ran 10 miles offshore and set up three staggered-depth live squid baits and started fishing after midnight,” Savage tells Outdoor Life. “We fished all night and into the day and caught nothing but a pair of 500-pound sharks – a porbeagle and a thresher.”
But the evening of Oct. 3, something took one of their live squid baits and pulled hard against heavy tuna tackle and 200-pound test braided line.
“I’d been watching my depth finder and spotted fish in 100 to 150 feet of water, so I had baits at 130 feet, which is where that fish took a squid about 7 p.m.,” says Savage, the 52-year-old captain from Sanbornville, N.H. “We first thought it was a shark. But it made a long, strong run, and we chased after it for 20 minutes. It took about 800 yards of line.”
It was fully dark when Savage and McGirl began fighting the bluefin. That was concerning, as Savage said the area had lots of lobster traps on the bottom with lines tethered from them to buoys at the surface.
“If a fishing line wraps around one of the lobster trap lines it can tangle and cut off a tuna,” Savage says. “I use loose drags on my reels so if a fish gets a fishing line around a trap line, a fish isn’t as likely to tangle.”
During the fight that night Savage said the bluefin turned near one lobster trap line that could have cut their line. But the 18-year veteran tuna captain maneuvered his 36-foot boat “Out Of Line” so the fish never fouled, and McGirl continued the fight.
After a 20-minute long run the bluefin stopped and McGirl reeled the tuna hard for 10 minutes back toward their boat.
“Next thing we knew, there it was right behind the boat,” Savage says. “I hit it with a gaff in the throat, and it just quit. No more fight. I think it was tired and just gave up at that point.”
Savage set up an anchor winch that he uses for hauling big bluefins onto his boat through a stern “tuna door,” but the winch couldn’t pull it aboard.
“At the time we didn’t realize how heavy that fish really was, until my anchor winch couldn’t haul it aboard,” he says. “I’ve used it with 800-pound bluefins previously with no problem. But not that fish.”
Realizing they couldn’t get the tuna on board, they secured it to the boat stern and hauled it back to Rye Harbor, where Savage keeps his charter fishing boat.
It was 10 p.m. when the anglers got to Rye Harbor Marina where they used a heavy-duty hoist to lift the tuna and weigh it at 1,116 pounds. The bluefin had a 114-inch length and a 90-inch girth.
“I’ve caught a lot of big tuna over the years, but that’s the biggest one I’ve seen here,” Savage said.
The current New Hampshire record 962-pound bluefin tuna was caught in 2013 by Richard Green in the Gulf of Maine.
While early reporting of McGirl’s 1,116-pound tuna indicated the fish could be a new state record bluefin, Savage says otherwise.
“I was on the phone for a long time discussing our fish with New Hampshire fisheries folks,” Savage says. “I learned that for a fish to be a state record it must be hooked, fought, and landed in state waters.
“We were just outside the 9-mile range of state waters when we caught it, so it won’t break the record for bluefin, though it was over 150 pounds heavier than the current New Hampshire record.”