Five hours off the west coast of Nova Scotia, on the Wednesday of the 22nd annual Wedgeport Tuna Tournament and Festival, a 13-year-old strapped into the fighting chair aboard the Pelagic Predator and spent just over an hour on a fish she was not sure she could beat.

Delynn Jacquard landed it. Her bluefin weighed 711 pounds fresh out of the water, and if the International Game Fish Association ratifies it, the catch becomes the new female junior world record for Atlantic bluefin tuna. The mark it replaces has stood since October 2014, when Nova Scotian Jenna Gavin landed a 618-pounder at Ballantynes Cove. Jacquard beat it by nearly 100 pounds.

"I was thinking to myself, 'I don't think ... I might not be able to do this,'" Jacquard told CBC. "But then I did it and I was just proud of myself."

The mechanics of the fight were not glamorous. "It's a lot of work," she said. "You're hooked on to the rod and to the chair. Once you see the tip of the rod start coming closer to you, that's when you start twisting the line and pulling it in."

Speaking to Kathy Johnson of the Tri-County Vanguard, Jacquard described it more bluntly as "a workout, for sure" and added: "It took a lot of time, but was all worth it in the end because I broke the world record." She also explained the rules that make a junior record stand or fall. "I was the only one allowed to touch the rod and the line. When the leader was right next to the boat, they could touch that and they put a gaff in the tuna."

She had come close before. Last year, her first at the tournament, a shark ruined the attempt. "I went last year and tried to break the world record, but the last five minutes of the fight, a shark took huge big bites out of the tuna so it didn't count. It wasn't intact," she said.

There is a technicality worth understanding on the weight. Brandon Doucette, a tournament board member, told CBC that IGFA records are based on a fish weighed before it is gutted, while Wedgeport weighs after partial gutting. Jacquard's tuna went 711 pounds ungutted and 635 pounds afterwards. Doucette expects ratification but said it could take up to six months.

FOURTH GENERATION

Jacquard is a fourth-generation tuna fisher. Her father, Camille Jacquard, captains the Pelagic Predator and has been involved in the tournament since it was revived in 2004.

"I've won as a captain, but never as an angler. I go every year," he said. In 2011, aboard the Ol' East Sider, it was his wife Falon LeBlanc who boated the 626-pound bluefin that took the tournament's top prize.

"My father Eric, still to this day, fishes tuna. Right straight through as a child with his father," Camille said. "After the tuna disappeared in the 1970s, he took a break, but when the licences started to come back, he always stayed with this fishery up to what it is today."

A SECOND RECORD, ALSO BY KIDS

Delynn's fish was not even the biggest of the week. Aboard the Lucas & Noah, captained by Brent Pothier, three boys aged 10 to 12 — Lucas Pothier, Noah Pothier and Remi LeBlanc — took turns on an 801-pounder, the first fish to clear 800 pounds in the modern tournament's 22-year history. It broke a 796-pound record that had stood since 2014, the same year Gavin set the junior mark.

"They each took turns. It took them about an hour and a half to fight it," Doucette said.

"When they started yelling the weight out, the excitement was unbelievable," he told CBC. "We were just so excited to have not just one world record, but also a Wedgeport Tuna Tournament record."

Twenty boats fished this year and landed 52 tuna: 18 bluefin totalling 9,561 pounds, nine bigeye at 1,117 pounds, and 25 yellowfin at 1,132 pounds — the most yellowfin since the modern event began in 2004. The Sea Devil, captained by Colin Babin, had the heaviest overall weight at 1,695 pounds. Every bluefin landed comes out of a portion of the South West Nova Tuna Association's commercial quota that is allocated to the tournament each year, which on average allows about 10 bluefin to be taken.

"It's going to end up either in a restaurant or on somebody's plate in their house," Doucette said.

Wedgeport hosted the International Tuna Cup Match between the 1930s and 1960s and called itself the sport tuna fishing capital of the world. Doucette says the week is still as much about that as it is about scales.

"We're able to come out, celebrate our culture, and it's really such an incredible event for our community," he said. "A lot of people wanted to see Delynn's potentially record-setting tuna. It's amazing the support we get each and every year."

Delynn, a Grade 8 student at Ecole secondaire de Par-en-Bas, is back at school. Asked whether she will fish the tournament again next year, she said she is not sure.