Capt. Eddie Brown’s favorite harpoon currently resides at the bottom of the Gulf of America, and the veteran skipper couldn’t be happier that’s the case.
In mid-January, Brown headed out of Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, Louisiana, on a day with nearly ideal conditions — light chop and severe-clear skies. That made visibility absolutely perfect after he and his crew motored 30 miles down the Mississippi River and a mere 12 miles out into the Gulf.
Visibility is typically important because they were planning to fish first with their eyes, but on that day, Ray Charles could have seen what they were looking for.
Giant Tuna Busting on the Surface
“It’s hard to miss when you see giant tunas busting on the surface,” Brown said. “You see the explosions from a pretty good distance away, and the birds and everything going on. It’s definitely not hard to spot.”
The day started strong with two blackfins adding meat to the box, and then Brown’s charges followed that with a 165-pound yellowfin that had everyone on board jubilant about the day.
The crew included Jeff Tomaloff, of Vero Beach, Fla., an avid angler who had made a beeline to Venice when Brown told him he had an opening.
“After years of seeing that stuff happen on YouTube and Facebook and seeing the blowups and all the chaos, I was like, ‘Uh, I got to experience that at some point,’” he said.
For Tomaloff, a typical tuna trip out of his home port involves 110-mile runs and fish that pull a scale to maybe 60 pounds, so he was already really excited about the 165-pounder.
But then the crew upped the ante substantially on the fish that would surreptitiously claim Brown’s harpoon.
200-Plus-Pound Yellowfin on the Deck
“The second (yellowfin) we hooked was a real demon,” Brown said, “and we fought that fish — it felt like an eternity — but we probably fought it for 45 minutes or an hour.
“That one wound up being 207 (pounds). It was an angry fish.”
It was so disagreeable that Brown and his deckhand struggled to get a gaff in it. The stubborn fish refused to give up the ghost, so Brown decided to harpoon it.
He couldn’t find the basket of line for the harpoon, so he decided to attach it to a 50 wide, which was a little janky, but he felt it might work.
“They’re yelling that I got a shot if I want to take it,” Brown said. “So I’m like, in the chaos of that moment, I forget to clip the top shot to my harpoon.”
Brown hit the fish, and it went berserk, charging at the boat, and nearly smacking Brown’s face with the harpoon before it detached and sunk into Davy Jones’ locker.
They were finally able to gaff the fish and pull it aboard, and although Brown was crestfallen over the loss of his favorite harpoon, he was thrilled to have such a big tuna on board.
But the day was far from over.
The New Louisiana State Record Yellowfin Tuna
After getting the 207 properly iced, Brown looked out and saw another school of tuna erupting on the surface. He motored in range, and Tomaloff and another client moved to the bow to make casts.
Both hooked up almost immediately.
“(Tomaloff) cast the popper out to the right and maybe his third or fourth chug — boom — you see the big explosion, and then the fish takes a pretty good run,” Brown said.
A yellowfin hitting a topwater popper is always an impressive sight, but neither the captain nor the angler realized in that moment the size of fish Tomaloff had hooked.
“I couldn’t tell,” Tomaloff said. “I mean, I saw the blow up and everything, but I couldn’t tell how big it was. There was no way. Compared to what I’ve seen, everything out there is big.”
But this one was at an entirely different level, and it wouldn’t take them very long to discover that. Brown had a GoPro 360 running on his tower, and the timestamps showed Tomaloff fought what proved to be an absolutely gargantuan yellowfin for only 14 minutes.
There was none of the drama that they had with the 207-pounder, although the fish was, of course, a challenge to get aboard simply due to its heft.
Once the monstrous tuna was on the deck, Brown noticed immediately the hooks of the clear Madd Mantis popper had pinned closed the fish’s mouth, preventing it from getting oxygen during the fight, but it took him a moment to realize how truly big the fish was.
“I’m looking at it, and I’m like, “That thing’s got to be every bit of 70 inches,” he said. “I’m like, ‘That’s a big ass yellowfin.
“After a couple minutes of looking at him, I said to my deckhand, ‘We got it. The record’s 251.’ I said, ‘Dude, that thing’s got to be close to 260,’ and sure enough, he tipped the scales at 256.”
The previous state record was indeed a 251-pounder, caught by Elliot Sale in 2012 fishing out of the port of Grand Isle.
Tomaloff’s big fish measured 71 inches and had an astounding 54-inch girth.
“That thing was a Butterball, man,” Brown said.
After approval, it will reign as Louisiana’s new state record, but only because Brown was no longer in possession of his harpoon.
“We later found out, if we had harpooned it,” he said, “it wouldn’t qualify for the state record.”
