Most 16-year-olds’ big claim to fame is being awarded their driver’s license, but Kai Rizzuto has a bit more to brag about. Kai Rizzuto, grandson of Marlin contributor Jim Rizzuto, accepted an invitation to Kona, Hawaii, to join Capt. McGrew Rice and crewmember Carlton Arai on the Ihu Nui. The biggest marlin caught on the current Ihu Nui was a 996-pound blue, but Kai topped that with a 1,058-pounder. To put things in perspective, the biggest marlin ever caught by IGFA rules was Alfred Glassel Jr.’s 1,560-pound black marlin, and the largest Pacific blue marlin landed, also in Kona, weighed 1,376 pounds.
Video Credit: CBS New York
Kai’s grandfather passed down his fishing abilities by starting him out at an early age, and the work paid off.
“He has been fishing with me since he was two-years-old, and he apprenticed as a deckhand on Tropical Sun during the summer he turned 15-years-old,” says grandfather Jim Rizzuto. “He knows a bit about fishing, and possibly more than I do.”
After the 30-minute fight, the Ihu Nui crew measured the short length (tip of lower jaw to fork of tail) at 137 inches and the circumfrence of the tail stump at 20 inches. Jim says once back at the dock, the short proved to actually be 139 inches and the total length measured 13 feet.
“The digital display at the Bite Me Fish Market glowed a 1058,” says Jim, “which reflected in the flash of a hundred happy smiles from the surrounding crowd.”
As a grandfather can only do, he boasts that possibly Kai could be the youngest angler ever to catch a grander in Kona.