A FISHERMAN landed a record breaking monster catch when he reeled in a 500lb tuna.
Sea charter skipper Andrew Alsop, 48, fought with the fish for more than two hours before pulling it aboard with the help of five crew members.
The whopping 36-stone blue fin tuna weighs three times as much as captain Mr Alsop and is believed to be the biggest ever caught in Wales.
In a Jaws-like battle the giant fish dragged his boat for more than two-and-a-half miles after it was hooked.
Mr Alsop finally landed the huge 7ft 7in long catch 45 miles off the West Wales coast in the Celtic Deep area of the Irish Sea.
Mr Alsop, skipper of the White Water craft, was cheered on by his crew and his charter passengers as he wrestled with the 504-pound tuna.
After returning to his base at Neyland, Pembrokeshire, he said: “It is the fish of a lifetime.
“We’ve had Welsh shark fishing records off the boat but this was actually the first time in 20 years that I was both the skipper and the angler.”
When it was suspected that a massive tuna could be on the end of a line Mr Alsop passed over the controls of the boat to fisherman Gavin Davies and took the rod for the battle of his life.
Mr Alsop said: “I really didn’t think we had any chance in a million years of holding it on the tackle.
“At one stage I thought ‘I can’t do this’ – the fish was pinwheeling and fighting.
“But I had to land it, or it would just have been another fisherman’s tale.
“I knew it would be big but when it eventually came up it was even more massive than I thought.
“It took six of us to get it on board. We made sure we had plenty of photos then put him back in the water – he was pretty tired but hopefully he would be ok.
“It was an absolutely mad day, to be honest, and I was aching all over afterwards.“
Mr Davies said: “I’d gone with the boys for a day out shark fishing but we never expected this.
“I’ve never seen anything like it – it was a mega fish and mega rare. It was an absolutely brilliant day.”
Blue fin tuna were once common in British waters but dwindled after World War II when mackerel and herring stocks were decimated by over fishing.
However returning stocks of the smaller fish and warmer waters have seen tuna slowly return.
