On Jan. 10, 2026, Capt. Robbie Brown of the 56-foot Viking Just Right got a phone call at about 11 a.m. The day before, Just Right had scored an enormous 721-pound bluefin tuna off Virginia Beach that was a pending state record for angler Brandon Newsome. The existing record of 708 pounds had stood since 2020.
On the line, Capt. David Wright, of the 58-foot Gary Davis custom build High Hopes, congratulated Capt. Brown on his impressive catch and told his buddy he was proud of him, but he also had some questions.
Wright: “Oh, by the way, do you remember how long your fish was?”
Brown: “Yeah. It was 108 inches.”
Wright: “Do you by chance remember the girth?”
Brown: “Yeah. 65 inches.”
“I didn’t tell him anything else,” Wright said. “I was thinking, ‘Uh-oh, he’s not going to like me very much in a little while.” Wright was cruising back to Rudee Inlet and trying to estimate the weight of the 108-inch bluefin he had on the deck. “Drum roll…” Wright said. His fish had a girth of roughly 80 inches.
The New State Record Bluefin Tuna
At the docks, with a certified weight of 832.6 pounds, Wright’s fish absolutely crushed the Virginia state record by more than 100 pounds. Angler Mike Rogerson, of Virginia Beach, who chartered High Hopes for the day, will have his name in the record books, and Wright said he’s glad the young man was buckled into the chair.
“Fortunately, we had a 23-year-old on the rod,” Wright said. “With one of those old seniors, I might have carried one of them off in the cart instead of the fish.”
Wright is an OG. He’s run charters out of Rudee Inlet since 1978 and actually held the Virginia bluefin record briefly in the 1990s for a fish he caught with his father, the late James C. Wright, M.D., of the TV show Saltwater Fishing With Dr. Jim.
It Takes Luck to Catch a Huge Bluefin
At 68, Wright has had amazing experiences on the water, but nothing compares in intensity to the new state record bluefin, which ate a big ballyhoo on a Sea Witch. They were trolling in dense fog not too far off the beach on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The fish hit just off the the Smith Island flats in 48 feet of water.
“We got a bite, and I’ll tell you, it was probably, in all my years, the most exciting National Geographic sort of thing that I have ever seen,” Wright said. “When this thing bit, I couldn’t tell if it was a submarine surfacing or a whale. Have you ever had anything in your life that you weren’t ready for, and you know how your throat gets all constricted, and you can’t get the air to come through it? That’s about the way I felt, okay?”
Wright is an original member of the Penn Fleet, and he runs big Penn International VIS Two-Speed 130s to fish baits way back, “almost to the backing,” he said. But the fish didn’t bite on one of the long lines, it ate a free-lined bait fished much closer to the boat on a Penn International VISW 2-Speed 80 Wide spooled with Berkley ProSpec Chrome Premium Hollow Braid backing and a top shot of 100-pound Ocean Blue Berkley ProSpec Chrome.
“You know, I’m trying to say it without beating on my chest, but really, we were just lucky,” said Wright. He said they were lucky the fog convinced him to fish off Smith Island because he thought there would be fewer boats. They were lucky to have a young angler on board who could handle the fight. And they were lucky to hook up with the fish in just 48 feet of water.
“We were in shallow water, okay? That was our key advantage,” Wright said. “He can go any direction on that compass of 360 degrees, okay? But he can’t go very far straight down.”
If they had been fishing out on the continental shelf, the bluefin would have likely dived deep, and they would have had a much more difficult time with it. As it was, Rogerson battled the giant tuna for 90 minutes of runs, stalemates and boat charges. Wright did his best to keep up with the fish from the helm, which was made difficult by the dense fog. He couldn’t see the fish or the line through much of the fight.
That’s where an experienced mate came in handy. Wright’s mate, Andrew Flory, has run the deck of High Hopes for a decade. “I’m giving him 90 percent of the credit,” Wright said. From communication with the helm to coaching the angler, Wright had high praise for Flory. When the fish came boat-side, it was spent and rolled belly-up. Flory went to work quickly with a hand gaff and tail rope to get the big tuna on the boat.
Things did not go so smoothly back at the Virginia Beach Fishing Center, which is currently renovating some of its docks. Wright had to call a friend with a boom truck to come get the state record bluefin tuna off the boat for weighing on certified scales.
Bluefin Tuna Migration
Back in the 1990s, when Wright held the Virginia bluefin tuna record, he only held it for five days. Capt. Robbie Brown only held his 2026 record for about 18 hours. These records seem to fall quickly when schools of large bluefin tuna move into the area.
Wright said he thinks these huge tuna come over from the Mediterranean Sea to mingle with resident tuna. In their southward migration, there were a lot of big bluefins caught off Virginia this season. But if a record bluefin tuna is on your bucket list, there’s no reason to rush to the coast. With the quota met, the recreational trophy fishery was closed Jan. 13. It won’t re-open until Jan. 1, 2027.
“I can guarantee this record will stand for at least a year,” Wright said, before saying the bluefins had already moved out of the area, anyway.
Fun Fact: When Flory cut open the Virginia state record bluefin’s stomach to see what it had been eating, he found three spiny dogfish. Wright said there are millions of the little sharks off Virginia right now.
