Florida fishermen reel in gigantic grouper

Here’s a fish tale about one that didn’t get away.

Two Florida anglers caught a Warsaw grouper so big that it required the entire crew to hoist the fish over the boat’s rail in late January off the coast of Fort Myers.

“It was a monster! One of the largest ever caught,” said Joshua Jorgensen, owner of BlacktipH Fishing. “The fish floated to the surface, and we all started screaming. We didn’t realize how difficult it would be to bring this fish in the boat.”

Jorgensen and Capt. Jason Boyll of Sarasota set out from Fort Myers on Jan. 22 with Capt. Gord Daniher and a crewman aboard Daniher’s 42-foot boat.

They traveled four hours to “Pulley Ridge” in the Gulf of Mexico, where Boyll dropped a banded rudderfish more than 400 feet to the bottom.

The bite was almost immediate, according to the fishermen.

The men wrestled the fish into a cooler and arrived the next day back in Fort Myers. They reportedly used a tractor to hoist the grouper onto the dock.

“The scale read 294 pounds, which means this fish was well over 300 pounds when we caught him,” Jorgensen said. “These fish normally lose 10% of their body weight before we can get them to the dock.

“It’s the biggest I’ve ever seen in person. The fish was longer than me, well over 7 feet in length.”