6/23/17 Friday morning made for an exciting and potentially record breaking day for New York angler, Steve Jessup, pulling in what many are calling a unbelievably rare catch off the coast of Block Island this morning.
While fishing off of Block Island Friday morning, Jessup hooked into what he believed to be a large shark or ray, after the ensuing battle lasting nearly two and a half hours, Jessup had bested a record Atlantic Halibut that tipped the scales at over two hundred and fifty pounds. “At first I believed it was a snag on a wreck, wouldn’t budge, and was gonna cut it off and start the drift over, but to my amazement the snag began to peel line off the reel at an alarming rate”!
Jessup, a Long Island electrician was fishing Friday morning in what he described as, “an undisclosed location” in “deep waters” when he hooked into the rare and elusive bottom dwelling carnivore.
“I’ve fought big sharks and rays before, but I couldn’t believe how I couldn’t gain any line on him for the first fourty five minutes!”
It is believed this is the first Atlantic Halibut in recent memory to tip the scales at over one hundred pounds on the eastern seaboard in the last eighty years. The animal was loaned by Jessup to DEP officials for research and tissue samples to determine to the age of the behemoth, but only after many photos and measurements were taken.
The fish unofficially weighed in at two hundred and sixty seven pounds and six ounces, and had a length of over seventy four inches, and a width of over fourty inches.
When asked what he used to fool the massive fish, into taking the bait, he candidly replied, “a whole bluefish, a sort of Zobo rig, and a heck of a lot of luck”.