757-Pound Swordfish Caught in Florida, Breaks Record

A stock photo of a swordfish National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

A Florida fisherman’s recent catch is turning heads.

Captain Nick Stanczyk took several clients out on his boat near the Florida Keys. About 10 minutes later, he noticed a fish bite.

“I gave my usual talk about what to look for when watching the rods. A bite on the tip rod would just be a funny bounce at the rod tip and a bite on the buoy rod would either suck the buoy under or lay it over on its side,” he wrote on Facebook.

Minutes later, he said, “I saw the buoy lay over on its side for a second. It usually bobs up and down vertical with the 8-pound lead on it, but when it lies over it means a fish is swimming the lead up.”

Stanczyk suggested that he was stunned by the catch.

“I didn’t say anything for a few seconds because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Once I was certain I told everyone we had a bite. There was no bent rod, no line screaming off the reel, just a buoy that looked a little different than it should,” he said.

Some 40 minutes later, an “electric blue swordfish” was seen below, he added.

“I told them it was big, but I wasn’t sure how big. I said it could be 400 plus but I didn’t get a great look. The next couple of hours went by quick,” the captain continued.

He said the fish would swim toward the bottom before coming to the top.

According to Fox News, the entire fishing event took about eight hours. His clients, Bill and Debbie Lussier, were able to harpoon the fish before bringing it into the boat.

The Seven Mile Bridge looking north toward Marathon, Florida, on Feb. 22, 2011. Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

It ended up taking about seven people to extricate the swordfish from the water and into the boat.

The Miami Herald reported the fish weighed 757.8 pounds, which is a new Florida record and record for Stanczyk.

Stanczyk didn’t throw it back, and he and his friends ended up eating it.

The largest swordfish ever caught weighed 1,182 pounds, and was nabbed in Chile, according to the Herald.

Young teens fish off a Fiesta Key, Fla., at sunset while seagulls hover waiting for fish scraps tossed into the bay on June 25, 2016. Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP

“Every morning I left my house to go fishing saying, ‘Today could be the day.’ Today was the day,” Stanczyk also wrote on Facebook. “None of us were giving up!”

“It was the best fish I’ve ever eaten,” he said of the taste of the fish. “I don’t know if it was the boost of mercury, the sweet taste of victory, or what, but it was good. Damn good.”

Do Swordfish ‘Spear’ Their Prey?

There is a myth that swordfish can reach incredibly fast speeds underwater before spearing their prey.

“It is physically impossible for the fish to even approach these speeds. However, at least one of them can accelerate its bill at an astonishing rate. They do not use their bills for stabbing,” said BBC Earth.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Jens Krause of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology in Berlin, referring to reports that swordfish can swim in excess of 60 mph.

He told the BBC: “Some of those high-speed figures come from articles published in the 1940s and 1950s. One comes from Country Life, it’s not even a scientific journal.”