Angler Catches Potential 450-Pound World Record Yellowfin Tuna With Enough Fresh Meat To Feed An Army

This is that time of year when the big Yellowfin Tuna just start to show up off of Mexico and Southern California, and nowhere was that more evident than in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with Captain Roberto Osuna.

Every great fishing story has some element of outrageousness to it and this one’s no different. Marla’s Sportfishing told FTW Outdoors that the San Diego-based angler who caught this estimated 450-pound Yellowfin Tuna and potential world record was nearly pulled into the water from cranking the drag up so tight while fighting the fish for 45 minutes.

The current existing IGFA all-tackle world record for Yellowfin Tuna is 427-pounds and that fish was caught in Cabo San Lucas back in 2012. This fish could’ve very well been bigger than that world record and from the photos below you’ll easily get a sense of the enormous size.

Why all of this talk about ‘potential’? Unfortunately, the fish never made it to the scales. The angler fought the estimated 450-pound fish for 45 minutes, they got it to the boat, took a bunch of photographs, measured it in length and girth, and then chopped the fish up for meat because the boat wasn’t equipped to bring in whole fish of that size.

Only later, after running the calculations of the weight estimates based on the 88-inch length (7 feet) and 64-inch girth (5-feet) did they realize the fish was *probably* a world record. I reached out to Marlas Sportfishing on Facebook about this tremendous catch and here’s what they had to say. This fish was caught on a 3.5-day fishing trip where they were out fishing overnight.

Ultra Cow!!!
Our first fishing day was phenomenal with 5 tunas aboard ( 80-150lbs). We saw some big fish on the area but didn’t have any luck, so I decided to go to the squid grounds. I knew we were gonna have better chances with live squid, everybody worked hard to make bait that night, it was perfect. The next day it was still dark (6am) when I turn the engines on we started moving to the tuna area, had a good feeling, nonstop marking fish on the finder, wind and current was just perfect!!! Our second day started, set out 6 fly lines on the starboard side and two balloons on port side, both with a nice 12-14in live squid on the double trouble. It didn’t take long. When the deckhand started screaming “THE BALLOON” Keith Drouet was on the rods ready to go!!! Okuma Makaira 50ii-SEa was set up at 40lbs of drag, AMAZING!!!! The fish took 500 yards of line INCREDIBLE. The fish did one long run!! Went straight down and that was it!!! 40lbs of drag was enough to bring that fish in, it came out dead. Nobody inspected how big it was until we taped it!!
ULTRA COW!!! 88×64in

I can’t even begin to imagine the feeling of complete and utter defeat if you’re the angler fighting a MASSIVE tuna like this and it’s just peeled off 500-yards of line. I’ve fought marlin before that screamed out so much drag the fish would be jumping and it would be 50-yards to the right or left of where you thought your line was because it takes so long for that line to bend through the water. 500-yards is an insane amount of line for a fish like this to pull out.

Marlas Sportfishing has an array of charter fishing options with a 20% discount from June through September. You can visit their website by clicking here if you want to hit up Puerto Vallarta and take a crack at some enormous tuna and billfish. You can also find them on Facebook here!