Capt. David Wright has been running charter trips off Virginia Beach since 1978. And on Saturday, as Wright and his crew ran back to the marina with a monster bluefin tuna on deck, he was trying to stay humble as he talked on the phone with his friend Robbie Brown. He and every other local captain had already heard about the fish Brown had caught the day before: a 720-pound bluefin that broke the Virginia record set in 2020. The trouble was, Wright was pretty sure theirs was bigger.
“I was just telling him, ‘I’m happy as can be for you. But, by the way, do you remember how long your fish was?’ Wright tells Outdoor Life. “And he said, ‘Yeah, 108 inches.’”
By that point, Wright explains, they’d already measured their own tuna at 108 inches long with an astonishing 95-inch girth. One of Wright’s clients, Mike Rogerson, had reeled in the fish after a 90-minute battle, and they were headed back to weigh it on a certified scale.
“So I wasn’t about to pop [Robbie’s] balloon. He’s a friend. But then I had to ask, ‘Well, do you by chance remember the girth?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, 65 inches.’ And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, that’s great, but you might not like me after this.”
Back onshore at the Virginia Beach Fishing Center, Wright’s crew put the giant bluefin on the scales, where it weighed 835.8 pounds. The director of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission was there, and he certified the fish as a new state record.
“He freaked,” Wright says. “He measured everything on it, and after measuring the tail, he said, ‘This tail is like twice as big as the one from last night!’”
A Monster in the Fog
With all the hype around Brown’s new state-record tuna, Capt. Wright was excited and making plans Friday night for his charter the next morning. The forecast called for temps in the high 60s and rain. He’d run a couple tuna trips since Jan. 1, when Virginia’s recreational bluefin season re-opened, and they’d already lost a huge fish boat side after a swivel broke at the last second.
Meeting his anglers on the dock Saturday morning, Wright saw that the forecasted weather had changed. There was dense fog in every direction, which ruled out a couple of his spots farther offshore. So, he made a plan on the fly as they headed out from Rudee Inlet aboard his 58-foot boat, High Hopes.
After running about 8 to 10 miles offshore, they reached the edge of Smith Island Flats where the water is around 48 feet deep. It was hard to see much of anything with all the fog, and they put out two flat lines rigged with ballyhoos roughly 50 to 70 feet back. The first hour or so was slow. Then it happened.
“It was the most amazing bite I’ve ever had,” Wright says. “We were still in dense fog, and it was like a whale surfacing. The splash was over 15 feet in the air … That bite, just the strike. It was crazy.”
Mike Rogerson hopped on the custom rod, which was paired with a Penn 80 international reel with braided mainline and a top shot (leader) of 100-pound Berkley monofilament. Wright says it’s a good thing Rogerson is in his 20’s. Because with shallow water and nowhere to dive, the fish headed straight for the Mediterranean.
“He just left us,” Wright says, “Then he came right back at us, and left us again. It was a stalemate for a while. But Rogerson, he hung in there.”
The captain also gives credit to his first mate, Andrew Flory, his “unsung hero of the battle.” Flory stayed at the ready and kept an eye on the line, which kept disappearing into the fog with each run. Finally, when the huge tuna rolled belly-up on the surface, Flory stuck it cleanly with a hand gaff and got a rope around its tail. Everyone on board helped haul the fish to the transom and then slide it through the tuna door.
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Wright told the crew they were done for the day and turned the High Hopes back toward Virginia Beach. Nobody argued with that.