“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, if you’re lucky,” said Brad Hudgins of Gloucester of catching a 914-pound blue marlin off the Virginia coast on Friday. “I was the one in the fighting chair but it was a team effort. You’re not going to get it by yourself.”

Hudgins was fishing aboard the Backlash out of Virginia Beach with Capt. Steve Richardson and mate Newt Cagle. He was accompanied by his father, Bill Hudgins of Gloucester, his 10-year-old son Braden and longtime friend and fishing buddy, Craig Revere of Middlesex.

The boat was about 66 miles out, Hudgins said, when the big fish was hooked just before 9 a.m. “We got the leader in the first 15 minutes, but the fish was so powerful we couldn’t get it,” Hudgins recalled. The fish took the boat another 22 miles to the east and it was seven hours later before it was brought alongside.

“A lot of things went right, there were a lot of ups and downs all day,” he said...