A New Zealand woman has a whale of a tale to tell her friends back home after she made a record-breaking catch in Nova Scotia.

Erin Jacobson came to Nova Scotia determined not only to catch a bluefin tuna, but also to break a world record.

She achieved her goal Wednesday morning when she hauled in a 911-pound bluefin tuna in Ballantynes Cove.

"I heard that the bluefin tuna were running here and that they're just awesome," says Jacobson. "So both of us came over to try and break some world records."

The catch has led Jacobson to unofficially break the world record for the largest tuna caught by a woman, using a 50-pound line. The previous record was set back in 1950 at 518 pounds.

Jacobson chartered the boat from local co-captains, George Boyle and Dale Trenholm.

"There's no small fish here, there's very few of them" says Trenholm. "There are tons of records here still to break; it's there for the taking."

Jacobson holds at least ten other world records for big game fishing, but she says today's record-breaking catch was simply amazing.

"There were all these tuna just swimming around everywhere after the herring," says Jacobson. "And I put my line out with a herring on it and actually watched this tuna just come up out of the water and engulf my herring and then I was attached to the fish and screamed away."

"He didn't come easy," says Trenholm of the tuna. "So he was about five minutes on the wire and we had him, but once we had him all secured, then we realized ‘wow.'"

Jacobson says she's not sure why the previous record stood for 60 years, especially given that she broke it in less than two hours.

"Probably not enough women fish," says Jacobson. "And I'd really like to see more women fishing because it's an amazing sport. It's a big adrenaline rush. It's fantastic."

This was Jacobson's first visit to Nova Scotia and she says she plans to come back. She also says she plans on breaking more world records on her next visit.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh