iStockphoto / Kittisak Songprakob
There is big fishing news out of Connecticut after an angler caught a 700-pound thresher shark.
The current state fishing record for the thresher shark species in the Nutmeg State is a 467 pound, 0 ounce shark caught by angler Mark Hiller in 2006 while fishing out of Montauk Point.
The only state fishing record in Connecticut bigger than the 700-pound thresher shark that was just caught by angler Ed Lovely is the state’s record for bluefin tuna at 770 pounds. Even the mako record at 650 poujnds, which is currently heavier than the existing thresher record, would fall if/when the 700-pound thresher shark record is certified.
Connecticut Man Catches Record 700-Pound Thresher Shark Fishing Off Stonington
Ed Lovely spoke with ABC News about his catch heard all around the state. He talked about his typical style of shark fishing, using “balloons out acting like a bobber to hold your bait to the depth you need.”
Of course, the sharks are much larger than a trout taking a worm dangling underneath the bobber. So when a shark smacks the bait, or begins to chew it, there’s a noticeable strike versus the tiny ripple that might be produced from a little brook trout.
Lovely says he caught the 700-pound thresher shark on July 30th of Stonington, CT. He is a seasoned shark fisherman and landed 19 sharks last year but has never seen a thresher shark in those waters until now.
After fishing for an hour with no luck, they opted to move a mile deeper. That proved to be wise as he got a strike almost immediately after putting his line the water.
Getting A 700 Pound Shark To The Dock
It took him a whopping SIX HOURS to reel in the pending Connecticut state record thresher shark. That is a HECK of a fight. I once battled a blue marlin in Costa Rica for over an hour and thought my arms and legs were going to fall off from fatigue, I can’t imagine doing double that.
After two hours, they got their first look at the huge thresher shark and realized they had something special on the line… It only took 4 more hours of battling the shark to get it to the boat.
What next? Well, with the iconic long tail of the thresher shark this 700-pound specimen measured 16.5 feet long. A shark that big presents problems in any sized boat but his boat was only 16′ long…
So, Ed Lovely and his fishing partner got ropes, tied the thresher shark to the side of the boat, and started slowly driving back to the dock so they could put it on the scales. His son met him at the dock and they were able to move the pending Connecticut record shark to a trailer… all by 1 am.
Were they worried about fishing in the dark in the Northern Atlantic? Lovely says no.
He told ABC News “when we were fighting the fish before dark, I said to my buddy, ‘It’s getting dark, I don’t have lights, maybe we should cut the line.’ He turned around, looks at me and goes, ‘We’re not cutting the line, we’re all in.’ I got the headlamps out, and we kept fighting into the dark until we finally got him. It was insane, it was awesome.”
What’s missing from this story?
Well, in all of the articles written about this pending Connecticut record thresher shark I have seen zero mentions of a ‘certified scale.’ In order for a fish to qualify as a record, unless it is a length record, it almost certainly needs to be weighed on a certified scale.
Often times certified scales can be found at marinas. Or people get resourceful and go to grocery stores or mailing centers. But they have to be accurate for the record to be accepted.
According to reports, Lovely is in contact with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection about whether his 700-pound thresher shark will be certified. The latter confirmed to news outlets that they are reviewing the shark for the Marine Trophy Fish Award.
Many of the reports on this catch note that it is estimated at 700 pounds. That could be because they didn’t use a certified scale, though they might have.
However, it was confirmed that the 700-pound thresher shark was cut up into fillets and put into coolers for friends and family to eat, to spread the catch around. So there is no way to retroactively weigh the fish.
With all of that said, it is also possible that because this thresher shark stood to break the existing Connecticut thresher shark fishing record by 233 pounds, they might juts give it to him. His fish was clearly over the 467-pound threshold of the existing record. But that will be a judgment call if that’s the case.
For context, the IGFA Fishing World Record for the Thresher Shark species is a 767 lb 3 oz fish. It was caught by angler D.L. Hannah on February 26, 1983. He was fishing in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand.
So this fish wasn’t too far off from a world record!