A 56-year-old fisher who battled for more than four hours to reel in a three-metre tuna has been awarded the prestigious international award for hauling in the 411.6kg monster fish.
Donna Pascoe, of Auckland, caught the record-breaking Pacific bluefin near the Three Kings Islands off Cape Reinga in New Zealand last year.
The mother-of-two came out on top, from more than 800 other candidates, for the Best World Record award at the recent International Gamefish Association Awards in the U.S.
Ms Pascoe, who began fishing in 2007, told Daily Mail Australia that judges of the awards were impressed by the rough sea conditions in which the fish was caught.
She says her mammoth catch, the largest to be caught by a woman in New Zealand, is proof that women are just as skilled as men at fishing.
‘Many people don’t think women can fish but this just shows that we are just as capable and we can also beat men at it too,’ she said.
Ms Pascoe attended the acclaimed awards night, held in Florida in April, to claim her ‘Best World Record for 2014’ award. ‘It was a really great feeling and we were treated like royalty,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly a once in a life-time thing and I really don’t think I’ll be able to beat the record.’
Last year, Daily Mail reported that the experienced angler first suspected something fishy was going on when her line began to tug. ‘The line was peeling out like it was attached to a freight train,’ she said at the time.
‘As usual, I was pretty nervous that I might get spooled. Thankfully, the fish stopped running and I was able to get a bit of line back in.’
Unaware of the scale of her catch, Ms Pascoe and her four-strong team battled for over four hours to drag the gargantuan tuna onto her boat.
‘It was a very stubborn fish, but I’m stubborn as well,’ she said.
Alistair Blair, chairman of The Fish Society – the largest online fish retailer in Britain, told Daily Mail that a whole bluefin tuna contains around 55 per cent of edible meat. That means it could make 1,769 tins of tuna (160g, brine drained), 2,875 tuna sandwiches or 511 dishes of tuna sashimi.
Ms Pascoe, however, is unable to sell it because the fish wasn’t caught on a commercial vessel. Instead, she told Daily Mail Australia the fish has been molded in fibreglass.
‘The exact replica of the fish has been done now and we will have it up at our local fishing shop next week for people to see,’ she said. The enormous catch put Ms Pascoe in first place in the tuna section for the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council Nationals Competition.
Bluefin are the world’s largest tuna and can live for up to 40 years. Built for speed, they can dive up to 4,000 feet and have retractable fins so they can seek out schools of herring, mackerel and eels.
