Fitchburg fisherman lands giant tuna

FITCHBURG - As a kid, Jake Hewitt started out with a worm and a bobber, hoping to catch a sunfish.

But the now 18-year-old Fitchburg resident hooked a fish that was a little bit bigger, off the coast of Maine on Saturday - a 112-inch, 800-pound bluefin tuna.

“It took two and a half hours to reel in, and we had to go to another boat to get more people to lift it up because it was too heavy for just two of us,” Hewitt said in an interview Monday.

Asked if it was the biggest fish he ever caught, Hewitt answered simply.

“Definitely,” he said. “I normally go to Plum Island for stripers or Sunset Lake in Ashburnham.”

Hewitt and his fellow Cushing Academy alumnus Max Bogdanovich - a 19-year-old commercial lobsterman and tuna fisherman out of Portland - set out from port on Bogdanovich’s boat Bogsea around 6 p.m. Friday.

Around midnight Hewitt hooked the tuna. For more than two hours, he fought to bring the fish to the surface while Bogdanovich manned the boat.

Hewitt said he used "rod and reel for the fight," and then the fishermen "harpooned it when it got to the surface of the water to land it."

“We sealed the deal then,” Bogdanovich said. “But we couldn’t get it into the boat. We had to go over to my buddy ... it took four of us.”

The teens landed the fish in Portland the next morning. With head, tail and guts, it weighed in at 112 inches and around 800 pounds and was bought by a local tuna buyer, Bogdanovich said. The official catch and landings report from the National Marine Fisheries Service records it as 112 inches long with the head, and 607 pounds without the head, tail and guts.

Bogdanovich said that he wouldn't know the total sale price until the fish could be dressed, a process that takes some time.

But Bogdanovich, who just started tuna fishing this year, said it was the biggest fish he had caught.

“It gets the blood flowing,” Bogdanovich said.

Hewitt agreed.

“It’s always nice to catch something big,” Hewitt said. “And it’s always a surprise because you never know what’s on the other end of your line.”

Especially when you’re out at sea.

“In the lake when you catch them, they can be lackadaisical and lazy,” Hewitt said. “But these (saltwater) ones are always fighting more ... the fight’s a lot bigger and the fish are a lot more vicious.”