An­drew Gioan­net­ti

An­gler Bren­dan Bernard shat­tered the South­ern Caribbean Bill­fish Cir­cuit (SCBC) with a mas­sive 1,005.9lb mar­lin catch at the To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Game Fish­ing Tour­na­ment off Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go, yes­ter­day.Bernard, who reeled in the heav­i­est catch at last year's T&T Game Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion's Wa­hoo Tour­na­ment did it again on­board the Preda­tor with a catch al­most un­heard of any­where in the world.

It is a new record recog­nised by re­gion­al gov­ern­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, SCBC. Aboard the Preda­tor were Bernard, Michael Ros­tant, Pe­ter Reid, Si­mon Bernard and skip­per Bren­dan Far­fan. The five an­glers will re­ceive a Mer­cedez Benz B-class (val­ued at $300,000), which was long await­ing an an­gler to break the 1000lb mark.The pre­vi­ous na­tion­al and SCBC record of a 890lb catch was held by then 15-year-old ju­nior an­gler Sean Men­don­ca in 2008.

The com­pe­ti­tion, which was es­tab­lished in 1995, has nev­er wit­nessed a catch over 1,000 pounds, or oth­er­wise known as a "grander."This year the event at­tract­ed 18 in­ter­na­tion­al teams, with an­glers ar­riv­ing from the oth­er Caribbean is­lands, as well as South Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. Forty-one lo­cal teams al­so con­test­ed the tour­na­ment.The crew of the win­ning ves­sel was set to re­ceive $50,000 for their ef­forts. Up to press time last evening, the re­sults were be­ing tab­u­lat­ed.

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