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115-pound teenager reels in 835-pound tuna off coast of Louisiana

Kaleb Richardson may look like an average 14-year-old on land, but on the water, he’s a force to be reckoned with. According to the Acadiana Advocate, Richardson’s an award-winning fisherman and, now, he just might be a record-holder, too, for a being the youngest fisherman ever to haul in a massive bluefin tuna from the Gulf of Mexico.

Richardson’s dad Keith described the rare 835-pound catch as looking like a “submarine” from the boat.

“The tuna came halfway out of the water and just inhaled the lure,” Keith Richardson wrote on Facebook about the April catch. “For the first 10 minutes, it stayed on top like a marlin, then it sounded. … Kaleb was the angler, he did a very impressive job.”

It took about 45 minutes to get the fish aboard the Whoo Dat, where Kaleb Richardson proceeded to give the fish a big hug. At 5 feet 6 and just 115 pounds, however, Richardson couldn’t get his arms all the way around the tunafish’s 86-inch girth.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, the fish is estimated to be about 15 years old and is the fourth-largest tuna ever caught off the coast of Louisiana. The largest recorded in Louisiana, the paper said, was a 1,152-pound behemoth caught in 2003.

The Richardsons will now be enjoying tuna steak for a long time.

The Richardsons didn’t go out with the intention of catching the bluefin, as it’s not a species fisherman are allowed to target in the Gulf. However, it’s legal to land one if your intent was to catch something else. In this case, the Richardsons were targeting marlin.

Photo courtesy of Whoo Dat Sportfishing Facebook page

Photo courtesy of Whoo Dat Sportfishing Facebook page

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