Sawfish Release
So I received an email this morning with a video link from Texas swordfishing legend Capt. Brett Holden (aka Capt. Ahab). Last time I saw Brett was in July, when we caught and documented an IGFA Billfish Super Slam off the Texas coast aboard his boat Booby Trap.
Turns out, Brett had been in Islamorada recently, fishing with another swordfish great, Capt. Nick Stancyzk, of the famed Bud N Mary’s Marina and another guy I’ve **spent some time with**** **fishing for swords.
But this video wasn’t from a swordfishing trip — rather, it was from an inshore trip. The duo was shark fishing in the Florida Keys’ backcountry when they latched into an absolutely huge sawfish. The monster puts a huge bend into their 80-pound spinner, and at one point, at 1:10 in the video, the beast goes absolutely wild boat side, taking a swipe at Ahab with its toothy saw!
“What a monster,” Nick exclaims over and over as they bring the giant into the shallows for a safe release (sawfish are a threatened species and protected by law, after all).
“We stepped off the fish, and it was 13 feet with some bend in it, so it was probably 14 feet stretched out,” Brett wrote on the Internet forum 2coolfishing. “What a cool and powerful fish.”
Check out the video here, it’s worth a quick 3 minutes:
