By Melissa Fili
MethuenLife Writer
A MONSTER of a fish tale unfolded last month on the Merrimack River!
You see, even the Kattar family needs a little summertime break from Merrimack Golf Course now and then.
Manager Jamie Kattar thought it would be nice to introduce his 13-year-old great-nephew, Rocco Mastrangelo, to fishing out on the open water. Family friend Tommy Neve offered to take them on his boat, and Rocco’s grandfather, retired longtime Methuen City Auditor Tom Kelly, joined in on the fun too. Rocco’s mom, Kirby (Kattar) Mastrangelo, has been hard at work back at the golf course, where she’s in charge of all food and beverages.
It was a gorgeous day, and they caught some mackerel to use as bait. Then they headed up the Mighty Merrimack, occasionally dropping their lines, and stopped to fish about 100 yards from Michael’s Harborside in Newburyport. It’s here that an unseen giant grabbed Rocco’s line and bolted!
“We’d been to a bunch of different fishing spots and this was the last one,” Rocco tells MethuenLife. “I had my rod on a holder and all of a sudden, it was bent! I was trying to reel (the fish) in, but it kept going out. It was a good fighter!”
“It was fizzling the line right off!” Jamie recalls. “It took three of us about 25 minutes to get (the fish) into the boat. It was bigger than the net! I had my feet in the water trying to get it in. It was in my lap, and then I pulled it over my shoulder to get it into the boat! Crazy!!”
The massive 45-inch striper weighed in at 50 pounds.
After a few photos of Rocco and his wild catch, they released the fish back into the water.
“It’s the fish of a lifetime, I told him,” Jamie said. “You may not get another one like this for the next 40 or 50 years.
“I told him, ‘I’ve been fishing 50 years, and that’s the biggest one I’ve seen. You’re spoiled!’ ” Jamie laughed, adding, “He’ll remember that ‘til they day he dies. Now he thinks he’s the expert fisherman!”
Rocco admits that prior to this beast of a catch, the biggest fish he’d snagged weighed about 9 pounds, but he confidently told MethuenLife that nabbing the 50-pounder was SKILL, not luck!
Rocco’s had a great summer, filled with football and fishing, plus golfing over at The Mack (“I’m OK,” he says of his golf skills). He’s already been casting his line in hopes of landing another big one, and has even caught a few, but so far, “These all feel a lot smaller.”
