The biggest fish Te Puke's Gordon Dodds had caught before Thursday was a 44 pound snapper, but his latest catch has completely shattered that record.
He was fishing with Mount Maunganui friends Robert Scott and Brent Williamson on Thursday afternoon when he landed a blue marlin, weighing 266.80kgs, near White Island.

Mount Maunganui fishermen Robert Scott and Brent Williamson with Te Puke fisherman Gordon Dodds and his 266.80kg blue marlin.

'When the rod went off I grabbed it. We knew it was something quite serious.”
'After it struck the lure, it jumped out of the water three or four times.”
It took Gordon about an hour to haul the enormous marlin in.
'The last quarter of an hour was the hardest. Whenever we got him next to the boat, he would take off again and peel off another 40 metres of line.”
Gordon says it was incredibly hard to get the marlin on the boat but says the marlin's tail got caught in the boat's boarding ladder and the men were able to use it to haul the fish onboard.
They immediately motored back to Mount Maunganui with their giant catch to weigh it.
Gordon says the group plan to head out again next year and will try to catch an even bigger marlin.