Anglers aboard the Prime Time were fishing in an Alabama saltwater tournament last week, targeting tuna and swordfish about 120 miles off Mobile. It was during the wee hours of Aug. 1, and the anglers had settled down for the night. But before they went to sleep, they’d put a live bait out in deep water.
“I got up about 4 a.m. and went out on the stern deck and I heard fishing line being taken off the rod we’d put out that deep bait on,” Taylor Guidry tells Outdoor Life by phone while on another fishing trip in Cancun, Mexico. “The reel clicker wasn’t on, so the Shimano wasn’t making any noise. That’s why no one heard the fish [at first].”
Guidry alerted others on the boat, including his dad Chad, cousin Justin and boat Capt. Steve Pixley. They quickly gathered around the rod, and Guidry began cranking in all the line the fish had taken out.
“We think the fish was just doing its thing along the bottom, ate the hardtail bait, and kept on swimming,” says Guidry, 27, who lives in Destin, Florida. “The fish was 800 feet down, and we figured it took out 2,000 feet of line.”
Taylor says retrieving that much fishing line was exhausting. As he kept reeling, they thought he’d hooked a tuna, a swordfish, or a shark.
“I got the fish headed up toward the boat, but it stopped at the water thermocline about 300 feet down,” he explains. “It was a stalemate. I’d get it up 50 or 75 feet more, then the fish would muscle down to 300 feet again and just stay there.”
Two hours later, Guidry worked the fish alongside the 40-foot boat, and Pixley saw that it was a rare deep-water fish called an escolar. But he had never seen one nearly that big.
“We got two gaffs into the fish, and we put a tail rope on it,” Guidry says. “But it took us 30 minutes to maneuver it around and get it into our boat through its side doors. Once we got it on our boat deck it went nuts. Its tail was working so hard and fast that I think it would have broken my foot if I got close.”
A few minutes later, after the fish settled down, the anglers put the escolar into one of the two ice chests below deck. They continued fishing for a while, then ran back to tournament headquarters in the daylight. The fish was weighed there in front of a crowd that was stunned to see such a large and unusual fish.
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“We checked and learned it was much larger than the current Alabama state-record escolar of 102-pounds, 10-ounces,” Guidry says. “My fish on certified tournament scales weighed 161.6-pounds.”
Taylor’s catch data has been submitted to the state for a new record. The International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record for the species weighed 173.75 pounds, and it was caught in the Cayman Islands in 2011.
“Escolars are good to eat, but we donated the fish to the scientific community for study. They’re pretty rare, and one of that size is of great interest to them,” Guidry says.” I’ve had an ink print made of my whole fish rather than a standard replica mount. I think that’s really better, and Destin canvas artist Harley Van Hyning is the best at doing that.”
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