Twelve-year-old Stone Fornes and his fishing mentor Elliot Sudal left Nantucket Harbor on Aug. 16 expecting a low-pressure, easy-going day of fishing. Instead, the rising seventh grader got the thrill of his life when he reeled in a potential junior world-record white marlin that tipped the scales at 118.5 pounds.
It was supposed to be just a laidback day on the water for Fornes and Sudal. They left the dock at 7:30 a.m., which was late compared to the rest of the fleet that pulled out well before dawn. Expecting to return with maybe a couple of mahi, the pair left with only a half tank of fuel and one bag of ice, Fornes tells Outdoor Life.
Once they got out on the water, Fornes, who spends his summers in Nantucket with his family, realized it was a picture-perfect day for marlin.
“If there are big waves, you won’t be able to see their fin on the surface. You need perfect glass, and that’s exactly what we had,” Fornes says. “You could see the bottom in like 20 feet of water. It was the best visibility I’ve ever seen off Nantucket. I figured if we were going to catch a marlin, it would be today.”
The two anglers headed out about 10 miles south of Nantucket on the Not Sorry, Mom, the Stone family’s Invincible 39-foot Open Fisherman center console, searching for marlin fins. Fornes says they saw at least seven white marlin that day, and they tossed baits toward several without hooking up. Then, they saw a massive fish swim within two feet of the boat.
“When I first saw this marlin, I thought it was a mako shark. It was so huge,” Fornes says. “This was my first time ever marlin fishing and I didn’t know how big they are.”
He ran to rig up a rod while Sudal slowly maneuvered the boat to give Fornes a good presentation.
“I cast the bait directly on top of him, which scared him because it was a big bait, and it splashed the water. I thought he was gone,” Fornes says. “He probably only went about ten feet. Then the fish comes back. I realize my line is coming out fast, and it isn’t the baitfish.”
Fornes counted to ten to give the marlin plenty of time to eat his bait, made sure his drag was set properly, then shut the bail on his spinning reel and set the hook six times. The fish was on, and they both knew it was a big one.
“We just freaked out,” Fornes says. “Elliot was going crazy. I was shaking. We knew it was the craziest fish of my life.”
Fornes fought the giant white marlin with stand-up tackle (as opposed to sitting in a fighting chair) for the next 90 minutes, which is an impressive feat for a 5-foot-2 middle schooler, especially when the fish on the other end of the line outweighs him by several pounds.
“The fish never went below 15 feet in the water. It was always jumping, airing out, cruising on the surface,” Fornes says. “It was just a crazy acrobatic fish.”
While Fornes was busy fighting the monster marlin, Sudal struggled with the boat, trying to keep the fish from wrapping the line around the engines.
“Elliot’s driven for thousands of fish, and he says this was the hardest fish he’s ever driven for,” Fornes says. “We ended up burning out our bow thrusters because we were cutting donuts in the water trying to keep this fish out from below the boat.”
After an hour and a half, Fornes wrestled the tired fish close enough to the boat for Sudal to get a gaff in his tail. With the gaff in the fish, Fornes held his rod with one hand and opened the tuna doors with the other. The two muscled the monster into the boat, then tried to hold the flopping marlin down. Sudal stood on the fish’s bill while Fornes sat on its tail.
“It was lifting me like three feet into the air,” Fornes says. “It’s crazy how strong it was, even after an hour and a half of fighting.”
Once the fish was on the deck, Fornes says he was in shock. They weren’t sure what to do next, but they weren’t even thinking about world records yet.
“I actually laid next to the fish to make sure it was a keeper,” Fornes says, laughing. It was the first billfish he’s ever caught.
It wasn’t until they were heading back home that Sudal started thinking about how big the marlin was. He Googled “junior world record white marlin” as soon as the boat was close enough to shore to get cell service. That’s when Sudal learned that the standing record was 102 pounds.
“He realized that we could very well have the record on that boat, so he floored it,” Fornes says.
With only a partially melted bag of ice and some damp towels, Fornes tried to keep the potential junior world-record marlin as cold and wet as possible while Sudal sped toward shore. Once they hit the no-wake zone, Sudal was texting everyone he could think of. A crowd met them at the dock with more than 200 pounds of ice and offered to help get the fish weighed as fast as possible.
“I’m just so thankful for all the people that helped us,” Fornes says. “This wouldn’t have been possible without them.”
To ensure eligibility for world record status, the marlin had to be weighed on a scale certified by the International Game Fish Association. Finding one turned out to be far more complicated than they anticipated. With Fornes’ fish potentially losing weight with every minute that ticked by on the clock, it took them a frantic two-hour search to finally locate one. Once they finally got the fish on a certified scale, it came in at an impressive 118.5 pounds.
Now Fornes is applying for world record recognition, a lengthy and complicated process that includes photos of the fish, the tackle used to catch it, the scale used to weigh it, and the angler with the fish. The angler also has to submit the leader, hook, and line sample.
“The marlin world record is the biggest deal in fishing. You have to do everything perfectly, or they won’t give you the record. You have to get video and pictures of every single fin, dot, and detail,” Fornes says. “We need to fill out tons of paperwork. We’ve been working on it for about five days now, but I’ve had a ton of help.”
Since Fornes’ white marlin had broken its bill sometime in the past, they even had to track down a certified ichthyologist to verify that the fish wasn’t a hatchet marlin, a variety of billfish that looks like a white marlin but is actually a spearfish. Fortunately, Dr. Greg Skoma, an experienced marine fisheries biologist, examined the fish and confirmed it was a white marlin.
Assuming everything has been completed and submitted correctly, it could still take six months for the IGFA to make Fornes’ record official. Fornes says he’ll be happy to pass the time catching tuna while he waits.
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Matthew Sheehan of Boston, Massachusetts, currently holds the junior world record for the 102-pound white marlin he caught in 2011 when he was 11. The largest white marlin on record was landed by Brazilian angler Evandro Coser in 1979. He caught the 181.9-pound monster while trolling dead bait.