In what has been an ocean fishing season filled with thrilling catches of big, exotic fish from Southern waters, Matt Santora’s landing of a 662.2-pound blue marlin Wednesday morning nine miles from Point Loma tops them all.

So far.

Santora, 34, was fishing from his 21-foot Wellcraft center console boat, Finbomb, with his friend, Andy Vo at the wheel, when a fish hit his trolled, custom-made marlin lure made by Brett Crane of Crane Lures. It was tied to 100-pound test line. The line went screaming off, and they knew they had a good fish.

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“We were fishing for marlin and wahoo, especially marlin, when it hit the lure,” said Santora, who owns Finbomb (www.finbomb.com), a fishing apparel company. “We had a good feeling we were going to get a marlin, and when it bit, we knew it was a marlin. We just didn’t dream it was this big. But once she jumped, we knew.”


The man vs. billfish battle started at approximately 8:15 a.m. and lasted two hours before Santora reeled it to the boat. But it was too green, so he let it run another 45 minutes to an hour before he and Vo tail-roped it and used a pulley system to drag a specimen of a fish that measured three-quarters as long as the boat over the transom.

Angler Matt Santora, left, shows off his 662.2-pound blue marlin that he landed on his boat, Finbomb, just nine miles off Point Loma on Wednesday morning. Andy Vo, right, drove the boat as Santora fought the big blue for an estimated three full hours. ( / Courtesy photo )

Santora weighed the big blue in at the San Diego Marlin Club, where members just celebrated the historic club’s 84th year of being a public weigh station for local anglers. Santora’s blue is the heaviest ever weighed at the club that was founded on Sept. 15, 1931. The weigh-in was a car-and pedestrian-stopping event on Shelter Island Drive.

“Cars stopped, people came from all over to see the fish,” Santora said.


There’s only one fish recorded that was bigger, and that’s a 692-pound blue marlin caught by Alfonse Hamann on Aug. 13, 1931. It was weighed at the Balboa Angling Club on Balboa Island and remains the California state record for blue marlin.

Santora was getting the fish processed at Point Loma Seafoods early Wednesday night so he could share the bounty with family and friends.

“This is my fish of a lifetime, and it’s Andy’s fish of a lifetime,” Santora said. “I fought it by myself with 45 pounds of drag. Andy drove, and when he wasn’t driving, he fed me crackers and energy drinks. It was absolutely an epic experience.”