A fishing captain from the Florida Panhandle has caught what is truly a once in a lifetime fish and stuff like this just doesn’t happen every day. So many bizarre things need to fall into place in order for a catch like this to come together. The fish needs to become completely lost and disoriented, possibly ill, and find itself swimming in water that’s only several feet deep instead of 150-feet deep.
The disorientation of the pelagic sailfish and subsequent veering off course could potentially also be caused by a very strong current of warm/cool water flowing out of Florida Bay and out into the Gulf Stream, but that’s not the case here because this sailfish was caught by Captain Christian Yergens in the Northern Gulf of Mexico up in the Florida Panhandle (on a fly rod no less!!!). Then the angler catching the sailfish needs to probably be using tackle big enough to fight tarpon instead of snook and redfish (see our guide on ‘The Best Saltwater Fishing Rods For Every Occasion‘).
Here’s some more footage of this catch:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BILmDngAQ6i/
If the angler is out there fishing for speckled trout on 12-pound test and manages to hook into a sailfish he’s completely fucked and that fish is a) going to break the line within moments or b) he’s going to have to fight the fish for hours on loose drag and the fish will eventually just die from exhaustion, which would be a shame….This fish was released by the way, and it swam away to fight another day.
As you can see from the scenarios I’ve proposed above I’m completely fucking flummoxed on how Captain Christian Yergens managed to catch and land this sailfish in South Florida while he was out fishing for tarpon because stuff like this NEVER happens. People might see a sailfish that’s lost in Florida Bay once every few years but they don’t catch them, and they most certainly don’t land sailfish on the flats up in the Florida Panhandle while fishing for tarpon. This is truly the catch of a lifetime, and I find myself sitting here wondering how long I should wait before booking a fishing charter with Capt Yergens of CN on the Fly….
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