A man caught a record-breaking swordfish in Ocean City, Md.

       Officials with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources said Jacob Bertonazzi of New Jersey caught the 318.5-pound swordfish while he was participating in the popular White Marlin Open contest, which drew about 400 anglers to the beach town.

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       That breaks the state’s record for a swordfish that had been set just two weeks earlier by Peter Schultz of Anne Arundel County, who caught a 301-pound swordfish after an eight-hour fight in the area known as “Washington Canyon” off the Ocean City shoreline, officials said.

       Bertonazzi caught the large swordfish Aug. 6 while in the tournament in an area about 60 miles offshore that’s called “Poor Man’s Canyon.”

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       Wildlife officials said he was using a technique known as “deep dropping” and putting squid on a circle hook. He caught the big swordfish “just minutes before the tournament ended,” DNR officials said in a statement. Deep dropping is a technique used in fishing for swordfish where anglers drop baits at deeper levels, sometimes between 700 to 1,000 feet below the water’s surface.

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       Bertonazzi told DNR officials, “We were having a slow week … not having anything.” But that changed.

       “We had 15 minutes before the end of the tournament when it started taking (the bait)," he said.

       Record-breaking Maryland fish weighs more than the girl who caught it

       Bertonazzi said he worked on reeling in his big catch for two hours, an experience he described as “mind-blowing” to DNR officials.

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       Officials with the Maryland DNR office confirmed the catch to establish the record, and another official with the White Marlin Open competition certified its weight.

       Fishing experts said the method of deep dropping for swordfish has grown in popularity over the last few years and resulted in anglers getting “more catches of large swordfish.”

       Having two back-to-back large swordfish caught within just a few weeks isn’t too common.

       In 2019, two record-setting mahi-mahi were caught a few weeks apart. One was caught by a Pasadena, Md., woman and weighed 74.5 pounds. And the other weighed 72.5 pounds and was caught by a Cambridge, Md., man.