Massachusetts fishermen catch believed record 1,260-pound blue marlin

Two Massachusetts fishermen have landed what is believed to be the largest Atlantic blue marlin ever caught off the U.S. East Coast. The massive fish, weighing 1,260 pounds, was hauled in after a three-hour battle approximately 100 miles off Cape Cod on August 19, 2026.

Charter boat captain Damon Sacco and his client, Walter Chapman, initially mistook the enormous creature for a shark. Sacco, operating his boat, the Castafari, saw a large fin break the surface and realized it belonged to a marlin of an unprecedented size for the region. "I've caught a ton of marlin, but I've never seen a dorsal this big. It was four feet off the water," Sacco recalled. Chapman, a retiree and lifelong fisherman from Plymouth, spent nearly three hours fighting the fish on rod and reel.

The intense struggle left its mark on the vessel. The marlin's bill punctured holes in the boat's transom, damage Sacco now refers to as "war marks." Upon returning to shore in Falmouth, a crowd gathered to witness the weighing of the catch, which was confirmed at 1,260 pounds on an International Game Fish Association-certified scale. The weight places it just 142 pounds shy of the world record for the species, set...