Every wet season, anglers flock to the Northern Territory for the popular Million Dollar Fish competition — and this season it's been guaranteed someone will win the top prize for the first time.
www.abc.net.au
I have a story for that one too!
I took a few buddies and chartered a boat to fish for tuna. I caught a bluefin that was just over 400 pounds or a bit over 180 kg.
Due to regulations, the captain of the boat sold it at the market in Portland, Maine. I'm not a commercial fisherman and was fishing under their license. That made me ineligible to sell the fish but he could legally do so.
(I have zero realistic need for a fish that large. I could not possibly eat it.)
It paid for the cost of chartering the boat, a meal for three of us that included our drinks, and still put about $100 in my pocket.
It was awesome. I had to be strapped into a chair to reel the fish in. At times, I had to have help reeling the fish in. I'd pull and then reel hard and repeat that over and over again for about an hour. It felt like six hours, but it was not that long.
I have pics somewhere around here. I even digitized them with a scanner. One of these days I'll spot the folder when going through backups and share a pic. It was a bit dark and it was an old film camera. The price of bluefin tuna has gone up considerably since then. It mostly gets exported to Japan, so I'm told.
NOTE: I have no other epic fishing stories. The largest freshwater fish I've caught was only about 30" long. It did not compare to the tuna. Also, you know those bouncy balls that you sat on and hopped around on as a kid? Well, that's basically what you use as a float/bobber when tuna fishing off the coast of Maine. We've got some pretty big tuna, much bigger than what I caught.
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