Brandon McGirl caught a 1,116-pound bluefin tuna off the coast of New Hampshire on Saturday, October 3, 2026, setting a new state record and adding his name to a rarefied list of giant-game catches.
The fish was more than 150 pounds heavier than the previous New Hampshire record, which had stood since 2013. For McGirl and Captain Jamie Savage, the scale of the tuna was obvious the moment it came up from the water.
“We lifted it out of the water and immediately knew it was way bigger than what we thought and bigger than anything either of us had seen before,” Savage said.
McGirl said the day was not easy from the start. “It was very difficult conditions to try and fish. It was a little bit rougher than we were hoping for,” he said.
Even so, the catch quickly became the kind of once-in-a-lifetime moment that anglers talk about for years. McGirl said that for anyone who fishes for tuna long enough, landing a 1,000-pound fish is the sort of goal that stays in the back of the mind.
“If you tuna fish for long time, to catch a 1,000-pound fish, is, I mean, it’s something that you dream of,” McGirl said.
A giant that barely fit on the boat
The tuna was so large that it hardly fit in the boat, underscoring just how unusual the catch was for New Hampshire waters. The fish also stands out when compared with other recent bluefin stories, including a nearly 500-pound tuna caught off San Diego about a month earlier and a 212-pound bluefin tuna off the Outer Banks.
Those catches were impressive in their own right, but McGirl’s bluefin was in another range entirely. At 1,116 pounds, it became the benchmark for the state and a reminder that record fish can still turn up in unexpected places.
For McGirl and Savage, the day on the Out of Line delivered more than a memorable trip. It produced a New Hampshire record that will be hard to top.
