Local charter captain reels in a ‘giant’ catch while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico
Captain Jason Sherrill has made his living on the water for more than half of his life.
Even after 25 years in the fishing industry, he still loves to get out and explore new areas that provide excitement when finding something new. Last weekend, he was able to take advantage of the perfect weather and do some exploring, paying off in a full fish box.
“We were checking a new area on our way down to Key West, fishing on the way down,” said Sherrill, who is now a salaried and consulting captain for hire along with owning an inshore charter boat out of Sarasota. “I’ve been playing around in that area for the past two years. We were getting into yelloweye snapper, queen snapper, tilefish, deepwater grouper and more. Then we found an edge that seemed like it had a wreck on it in 460 feet of water.”
The crew enjoyed the calm seas and dropped bait onto the new find below. They were more than halfway to their destination 200 miles into their journey. With more than 110 miles left to Key West aboard the 66-foot Spencer, the anglers were in no hurry catching quality deepwater fish. On a couple of drops, they hooked fish that were too large to turn, getting them into the structure below.
“Queen snapper have soft mouths so we fish light for them. We tend to pull a lot of hooks out. Dropping squid I think we hooked a snapper and that’s when something big might have eaten one of them, but elephants do eat peanuts so it might have eaten the original bait.”
The something big was able to be held out of its structured home in the deepwater below, unlike the previous two hookups. A slow tug of war resumed and Sherrill knew it wasn’t a snapper on the other end.
“We only had 25 pounds of drag on it, I know because it was set where I run them for swordfish,” Sherrill recalled. “After 20 minutes we finally saw it below, it was a giant Warsaw!”
Despite the difficulty of light tackle the giant grouper was worked to the surface. Opening the tuna door on the back of the Spencer they were able to slide it in, securing it for a few pictures. That’s when Sherrill was able to finally see the true size of the Warsaw grouper.
“I was guessing it was over 200 pounds,” he said. “We didn’t put it on a scale, but it was definitely big.”
For comparison, a Warsaw grouper can grow to over 400 pounds with the world record at 436 pounds. There is no minimum size limit, but the daily bag limit is one fish per vessel. Most are caught in deep parts of the Gulf of Mexico in depths of more than 400 feet, and up to 1000 feet.
Captain Jason Sherrill of Reel Addiction and Bucket List Consulting can be reached at (941) 650-9788.
