Fishermen ‘battle’ 625-pound tuna for 7 hours before reeling it in, photos show
Despite a decadeslong career, Johnny Greene had never caught a bluefin tuna.
The avid fisherman has worked as a captain on fishing charters for more than 30 years in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources news release.
“At several times in my life, we have been fishing in the April-May time frame and have run across bluefin tuna,” Greene told officials. “But we have never been able to even slow one down.”
Greene has come close to catching the elusive creatures, getting as far as hooking the fish before losing them, he said. Usually, though, he ends up with a broken heart.
Recently, though, Greene’s luck changed. On the second day of a three-day charter with a group of anglers from Georgia, something unusual happened, he told officials.
“About 6 o’clock that second day, we got the big bite,” Greene said. “That fish took out on top, and I guess we chased that fish for 2 miles. I didn’t see the bite well enough to see if it was a bluefin, a big yellowfin or a blue marlin. But I knew it was a big fish.”
For about four hours, the crew held on as the fish fought against the hook. Eventually, the fish “expired,” according to Greene. Then came the hard part: pulling the 625-pound bluefin tuna up from the depths of the water.
“When you have to pull a 600-pound animal up, it’s not the easiest thing to do,” Greene said. “It requires communication between the angler, everybody in the cockpit and the wheelhouse. It’s basically a momentum game. You’ve got to get the fish coming up, and you have to keep him coming. If you take a break, the fish is going to start sinking again. It’s tricky.”
Finally, after about six hours, the fish made it beside the boat and the crew began getting it out of the water.
“It was like trying to catch a 10-pound bass on 2-pound line,” senior deck hand Grady Gunn told officials in the release.
Once the fish made it up, the entire crew burst into celebration, according to Gunn.
“That’s one of those things you think about your whole life that may never happen,” he said. “It may never happen again, but it happened this time. ... With a fish like this, it only takes one thing to go wrong. It may happen again, or maybe it won’t, but I’ll remember this one for the rest of my life.”
Even harder than pulling the fish up from the water though was getting it onto the boat.
“With a fish that big and the seas not calm, you have to think about every move with that much weight,” Greene told officials. “It was a battle.”
When “the right wave” hit, the crew was able to flip the fish onto the deck, Greene said.
The crew gutted the fish to make sure its meat was preserved. Once it was gutted, the fish weighed around 580 pounds, officials said.
“In fishing, some days are better than others, and there are some things that are meant to be. This was one of those situations where absolutely everything went perfect,” Greene said. “It’s a big deal. There are so many things, like the wrong time, the wrong step, anything, and it wouldn’t have happened.”
Bluefin tuna
Bluefin tuna are the largest kind of tuna, according to the World Wildlife Fund. They swim in all of the world’s oceans and “can live up to 40 years.”
The fish are known for their speed, the fund said. They are “made for speed: built like torpedoes, have retractable fins and their eyes are set flush to their body.”
Bluefins are endangered due to overfishing and illegal fishing in recent decades.
Anglers in the Gulf of Mexico have an allowance for the number of bluefin catches per year, according to Alabama officials.
“They have to swim at least 6 miles per hour to force enough water through their gills to breathe,” Greene said. “They never stop swimming. They are just eating machines. They eat and make little baby tunas. That’s all they do.”
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