iStockphoto / Adrian Wojcik
One of the things that’s most addicting about fishing is the unknown. Leaving your house in the morning, you never know if you’re about to have the best day of fishing of your life (or the worst) but you know for certain that if you don’t go fishing there’s zero chance of making lifetime memories, and that’s one of the things that has drawn me to fishing my entire life.
I’ve never caught a sawfish personally but I have seen them while fishing in the Florida Everglades and these endangered species are majestic fish that grow to enormous lengths, up to 25 feet! Previously, it was estimated there were between 500 and 5,000 endangered sawfish in Florida but that estimation has certainly changed in recent months as an unknown ailment has caused many of them to die out. However, this father and son duo fishing out of Port Canaveral were fortunate enough to land and release on.
Ryan MacInnis and his 13-year-old son Mason hooked up to a 12-foot sawfish *and* a 7-foot lemon shark at the same time, doubling up with two impressive species. They were fishing with Capt. John Lau of Fin and Fly Charters who shared the video below:
Sawfish are exceedingly rare, particularly in that part of Florida near the Kennedy Space Center. Capt. Jamie Glasner of Fin and Fly Charters told Jim Wayner at Florida Today “I never saw them until maybe just a couple of years ago.” Normally, I’d associate that part of Florida with fishing for bull redfish and gator trout and while targeting sawfish would be fruitless I would expect to see them in the Upper Florida Keys or Florida Everglades, definitely not in the middle of the state on the Atlantic Coast.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that Fin and Fly Charters has caught an endangered sawfish. They also landed this incredible specimen last year:
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think as Port Canaveral as the northerly limit of how far these fish travel as they’re most frequently spotted in South Florida. However, it is definitely worth noting that this same fishing outfitters has landed sawfish in Port Canaveral in back-to-back years so these endangered fish are definitely there.
This year, Florida has seen the deaths of 55+ sawfish from a ‘fatal spinning disease‘ that marine biologists have still yet to get to the bottom of. It’s a very alarming development that has taken the lives of these endangered fish.