Yellowfin tuna, Thunnus albacares

A rather large motley group of people gathered round to meet the Vagabond Monday morning to feast their eyes on a whopper of a yellowfin tuna – one that weighed in at 405.2 pounds!

Mike Livingston, an angler hailing from Sunland, California, reeled in this amazing fish. It was sixty-one and a half inches wide and it was an astonishing eighty-five and three quarters inches long.

This catch, made on hundred pound test line after wrestling for over two hours, is due to be submitted to the International Game Fish Association to get it approved as an all-tackle record.

Captain Mike Lackey has commented that the IGFA rules were adhered to, so this amazing catch will out-shadow the previous record, a three hundred eighty-eight pounder, which has not been beaten since 1977.

“When the scale hit that number it was like the Super Bowl here,” explains Livingston – who also happens to be a retired school administrator – referring to yells of congratulations from a group of two hundred spectators, who were there to take in the weigh-in.

He was so tired out from battling this beast that he only caught one tuna more the entire trip out.

Lackey had first guessed that the weight of the tuna was somewhere around three-hundred and ninety pounds, utilizing a tape-measure formula which is not always all too accurate. He proceeded to freeze the tuna to help keep it fresh for the journey home.

You can imagine his surprise when he got the whopper onto the scales and it topped over four hundred pounds!

Congratulations Mr. Livingston!