Jack Nicklaus Has An Epic Fishing Story Of Catching A 1,358-Pound Black Marlin On The Great Barrier Reef

Jack Nicklaus won 117 professional golf tournaments in his career including 18 major championships, the most of any golfer in history. Of those 117 wins, six of them came at the Australian Open between 1964 and 1978 where Jack Nicklaus, an avid sportsman, caught a record-setting black marlin while fishing on the Great Barrier Reef.

The Golden Bear recently sat down with Andy Mill where Jack told the story of catching a 1,358-pound black marlin that was longer than the IGFA fishing world record for the species, and how it nearly derailed the golf tournament for him.

Jack Nicklaus And His 1,358-Pound Black Marlin Caught In Australia

For context, the IGFA fishing world record for black marlin is a 1560-pound fish caught in Cabo Blanco, Peru back in August of 1953 by angler Alfred Glassell Junior. Jack Nicklaus’ black marlin is just over 200 pounds lighter than that world record fish but it actually measured longer than the world record.

This call went down before the 1978 Australian Open. Jack shot 73-66-74-71 that week to beat runner-up Ben Crenshaw by six strokes. However, after Jack went fishing he wasn’t sure he would be able to golf at all.

That’s because it took him over six hours to reel in the ‘grander’ black marlin. And every serious offshore angler’s dream is to catch a grander at some point so you know he was 100% dialed in to catching that fish and not thinking about golfing in the days ahead. But the battle was so brutal and he was so exhausted he wasn’t sure he would be able to compete.

Here’s Jack Nicklaus‘ black marlin story in full with more below:

Jack says when they hooked up to the grander black marlin they all initially assumed it was in the 600-800 pound range. And for what it is worth, that is still a MASSIVE fish. That’s bigger than any marlin I’ve ever caught.

Once he hooked up the crew tells him there is a monster on the line. It jumped 10 times and he got to see just how truly massive it was.

Getting The Marlin In The Boat And Back To The Dock

In total, it took him six hours and 25 minutes to get the fish to the boat. The marlin died during the fight due to exhaustion which isn’t uncommon when battling massive billfish.

At the time, the crew was calling it a ‘monster monster’ and not necessarily a ‘grander.’ Possibly because they did not want to jinx it tipping the scales at over 1,000 pounds. But looking at that fish, how could you not tell that it was easily over 1,000-pounds?!

Once they got the fish into the boat it was after 11pm at night. Keep in mind this is an era where modern technology is non-existent. They couldn’t just queue up the GPS maps and set the yacht to autopilot back to the dock.

So they had to wait until the tide came in so they could get the boat over the Great Barrier Reef but also do that during daylight so they could see the reef. Once they got the fish back, it measured longer than any black marlin in history, longer than the heaviest (1,560-pounds) caught in Peru.

Jack Nicklaus’ black marlin measured a 7-foot girth around its body. Let that sink in for a moment. 15 1/2 feet ‘short’ measurement. Absolutely wild.

After all that, he was able to get the actual skin of the fish to the taxidermist. These days in fishing you take a bunch of pictures of the fish and they make you a hyper-realistic replica but it isn’t the actual fish you caught. But Jack Nicklaus has his black marlin mounted at home in his trophy room which is truly something else.