Fisherman Doug Cushing after catching his breath and the enormous swordfish.
Smith, who was the skipper, held the previous club record with a 162kg swordfish catch last year.
The five-strong crew set off from Napier on Friday afternoon.
“We fished all night for swordfish and didn’t get any bites, just a couple of sharks, and then 10.30am on the Saturday morning we hooked that one,” Cushing said.
“We had a couple of lines in and I just happened to be on the rod.”
He said it took him about two and a half hours to reel in.
“We didn’t see the fish until maybe two hours and 15 in,” he said.
“It jumped out of the water about 20m away from the boat – so quite close – and we knew when it jumped out how big [a fish] we were dealing with.
“We got a couple of gaffs in, and it took all five of us to pull it on board.”
Cushing said he’d caught a bigger fish in the past while overseas, a tuna, but this was the biggest fish he’d caught in Hawke’s Bay.
The huge swordfish during the weigh-in alongside the crew, including fisherman Doug Cushing (right).
“It means a fair bit. My [late] uncle, Kevin O’Keefe, he was the club president for years and his name is on the heaviest swordfish trophy for the year.
“The family donated it, so, if I can win that trophy, it would be pretty cool.”
Cushing said swordfish was good eating, and it would be shared around ”the village” once it had been processed.
Club operations manager Neil Price said the catch had created excitement around the fishing club, and garnered interest around the country.
“Everyone is keen to know where it was caught, and they start getting ready to go out there.”
He said Cushing had been a long-standing member, and his son actually held a junior world record for a tuna catch.
As for swordfish, he said they were rare.
“There has not been a lot of them over our scales.
“There has probably only been six or seven over the history of the club, and we have been around for 62 years.
“They are a deep-water fish. They are not on the surface, they live on the bottom of the ocean.”
Earlier this year, a Northland angler caught a 279kg swordfish, while the New Zealand record appears to be a 404kg swordfish caught in 2012 off the Karikari Peninsula.