The crowds waited with eager anticipation as Brian Stover’s 10.5-foot long blue marlin was hoisted into the air at the Orange Beach Billfish Classic.

Finally, the number was announced: 776.4 pounds — a new record for the 27-year-old tournament.

Stover, a county commissioner from Paulding County, Ga., caught the record-setter aboard the “Mollie,” captained by Jeff Shoults, a veteran of more than three decades in catching blue marlin.

Stover told AL.com they were fishing about 240-250 miles southwest of Orange Beach, or about 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, when he hooked the fish.

He said he battled the behemoth for about 4 1/2 hours before it was finally in the boat. Throughout the fight, he was sure the fish would meet the minimum length of 107-inches to have it weighed, but others on the Mollie weren’t certain.

Then, finally, the fish wore down and came around near the back corner of the boat, with its head popping up out of the water for the first time.

“At that moment, everybody was seeing what I had been feeling,” Stover said. “That thing was like a dinosaur coming out of the water. The head was huge.”

Stover said most of his previous marlin fishing has been on trips to Costa Rica, but his largest catch previously was only 350 pounds — less than half of his Orange Beach catch.

Shoults was named the 2021 Gulf of Mexico “Captain of the Year” by In The Bite, the professional sportfishing magazine.

He’s won countless tournaments and caught a number of huge marlin over the years, but said in a video on the tournament Facebook page this weekend’s catch was his largest.

The Mollie’s marlin also brought in a winner’s check of $183,000.

While Stover’s catch was a record-setter for the tournament, it wasn’t quite large enough to eclipse the Alabama state record of 851.9 pounds set by Ginger Myers during the Mongo Offshore Challenge in 2020.

The Orange Beach Billfish Classic is one of premier sportfishing events on the Gulf Coast and over its lifetime has donated more than $730,000 to organizations dedicated to the conservation and health of the billfish population.