This saltwater monster took eight hours to reel in.
On March 31, 2019, Capt. Nick Stanczyk took a family swordfishing near the Florida Keys. He ushered his charter boat off the coast of Islamorada, where he knew there would be fish. Then, 10 minutes after the first bait hit the water—mahi belly and bonito belly—the day became a life-changing one.
The captain's clients from Cape Coral—Bill, Debbie and Konnor—had to cancel a previous fishing trip a few months before due to weather conditions, so expectations were likely high. However, it's safe to assume no one was expecting to hook into a 757.8-pound swordfish.
According to a Facebook post from Stanczyk, he explained to Bill (who was manning the reel) that swordfish can often be deceiving because they carry weight all the way through their tails. He was thinking it could be over 400 pounds if they were lucky.
Needless to say, they were lucky.
Watch the video below:
"This was the fattest swordfish I had ever seen," the Florida fishing boat captain wrote in his post. "I caught one the year before that tipped the scales right at 600 pounds. But this one was a lot thicker through the tail. I knew it was a lot bigger."
There are certain moments in our lives we subconsciously mark as pivotal, and outdoorsmen know this better than anyone.
Yes, there are your standard life milestones, such as graduating from school, getting married and having kids. But outdoorsmen are able to differentiate between eras of their lives with animals they've hunted and fish they've caught. A 757-pound swordfish is definitely one of those milestones.
"Every morning I left my house to go fishing saying, 'today could be the day,'" he wrote. "Today was the day. None of us were giving up!"
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the fish set a new state record, topping Stephen Stanford's 612-pound swordfish, which was caught off the coast of Key Largo in 1978.
The word record swordfish, which was caught May 7, 1953, in Iquique, Chile, still stands at 1,182 pounds.
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