ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WSVN) — A fisherman in Florida made a monstrous catch after he speared a 409-pound Warsaw grouper.
Fisherman James Taylor caught the massive grouper 85 miles off-shore during Saturday’s largest spearfishing tournament.
“It’s gonna be hard to top this one. That’s what I told my team on the boat,” said fisherman James Taylor.
The fish was 250 feet under the surface. “Maybe 30 feet off the bottom, the fish was waiting there for us,” said Taylor.
Spearing it was one thing, but getting it on the boat was the real challenge — it took about five guys.
The group of men made guesses as to how much the fish weighed.
“We dragged him up, it was a chore no doubt. Dragged him up into the box. My guess was 275, 280,” said Taylor. “We had guesses around 300, everything hovered around 300. We got it on the scale — it was crazy. That’s a whole other ball game getting past 400.”
At that weight, it may be a record breaker. The largest Warsaw grouper ever caught was 436 pounds, but that was hook and line. Taylor is waiting to find out if his catch is the largest Warsaw ever speared.
“That’s top of the top,” Taylor said. “I don’t know what else to hunt for after that.”
You might be asking yourself: What exactly did he do with the 400-pounder?
“We had it filleted at the weigh-in and cleaned up and I just distributed it to friends and family, and it’s already actually all gone,” Taylor said.
You might think this won him the tournament easily, but not exactly. Sadly, the Warsaw grouper isn’t part of the event.
“I was personally after an 80 to 100 black grouper, for the tournament, so to run into this fish wasn’t even on my mind,” Taylor said.
But who’s gonna turn down a shot at fishing immortality?
“It’s a fish of a lifetime,” Taylor said.
The family is applying to the International Underwater Spearfishing Association to determine if the catch is a world record. They’re also planning on applying for the Guinness Book of World Records.
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