Largest bluefin tuna ever caught on rod and reel snagged off San Diego coast

Good catch!

Fishermen in San Diego were stunned to catch a nearly 500-pound bluefin tuna this week — sending the local fishing community into a frenzy.

“We both got a look at it, and we didn’t even say anything,” Markus Medak of Shearwater Fishing, who snagged the prize catch with the help of another, unnamed fisherman, told Fox 5.

Gilled and gutted, the beast weighed in at 446 pounds — with an estimated weight of 500 pounds whole.

That’s the largest bluefin ever caught on rod and reel, according to Medak.

The record-breaking fish was brought to Tommy Gomes’s Tunaville Market and Grocery in Point Loma, which sells to local restaurants.

“It’s a big deal for the City of San Diego and for sportfishing. There’s a saying, ‘The world needs more tackle boxes and less Xboxes.’ We need to teach kids how to fish,” Gomes told Fox 5.

“Because it’s a commercial caught fish and the only records are sport-caught, so if he would have been out sportfishing, that would have been the new state record here in California, and it was a beautiful fish,” Gomes continued. “This fish creates jobs in your city — that stuff flown in on an airplane doesn’t do us any good.”

The formerly fearsome finned find will be broken down in a live demonstration at Herb and Wood on Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. — giving the public at chance to gawk at the creature up close.

A representative for the restaurant said that every part will be used — even its spinal fluid, considered a delicacy in some cultures.

Gomes told Fox 5 that this year’s “Super El Niño” is bringing more exotic sea creatures to California’s coasts.

“That’s the thing about the Southern California bite right now, if you can get out and go fishing, these are your good old day,” Gomes told the outlet. “Go out wet a line, tell some stories, and remember you’ll catch one, this big.”

Gomes says the head of the tuna will be given to a local scientist to determine where exactly it originated.

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