Huge amberjack eating snapper breaks South Carolina record

Fishing buddies Jim Carroll and Gordon Jobe left Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, around dawn on May 23 to chase dolphins and wahoo at sea. They were aboard Jobe’s 32-foot Edgewater boat, Call for Freedomand after a morning of quiet trolling, they decided to change locations and tactics.

“We fished a weed line for dolphin and wahoo for a while without success, about 60 miles offshore,” Carroll said. Outdoor living. “Then we decided to go out to shore in 100 feet of water and do some bottom fishing. It’s a spot we found last year, a flat area with no bottom structure whatsoever. But it always produces snapper, triggerfish, sea bass and more.”

The fishermen immediately got to work using two hooks chicken harness lured with squid strips. They put a lot of fish in the boat, but while they were fishing, every now and then one of them would hook a snapper or trigger, and then something bigger would hit and they would lose it.

“We couldn’t figure out what took our fish,” said Carroll, 52, who lives in Myrtle Beach. “But around noon I hooked a snapper or something, and boom, a huge fish took my bottom fish.”

It was a giant amberjack, and Carroll says he’s certain it ate a smaller snapper off his line and hooked himself. He fought the beast with a 7-foot heavy-duty rod and a Penn Fathom 40 reel loaded with 80-pound braid.

“It was brutal. A really tough, long fight,” he says. “I’ve caught amberjacks up to 80 pounds. But this fish was different — much stronger and bigger than anything I’ve ever dealt with.”

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After battling the amberjack in deep water for nearly an hour, the fishermen decided to put their boat into gear to bring the fish closer to the surface. It’s a tactic tuna and swordfish fishermen use regularly in deep water. And it worked for the South Carolina duo.

“There was really no reason that beast of a fish could ever have gotten to our boat, but it did,” Carroll said. “I got him on the side of the boat after he had planed up to the surface, and Gordon gave him a whack. He pulled him high into the bow, and I hit him with another whack, and we both got him aboard.”

Carroll and Jobe knew right away that the fish was a contender for a state record. They were still far from shore and out of cell phone range, so the two anglers used their inReach to contact a friend, who told them that the current South Carolina record was 123 pounds.

“That fish was almost as long as I was,” Caroll said of the 72.24-inch amberjack. “The thing was huge. The fish didn’t struggle much at the boat. He was worn out, and so was I.”

The anglers continued fishing and caught a few more bottom fish and smaller amberjacks. They then headed back to Murrells Inlet and docked their boat around 4 p.m. From there, the two anglers took the amberjack to a local tackle shop, but the fish was too big for their scales. So they headed to Seven Seas Seafood Market, where the amberjack weighed 129 pounds on a certified scale.

That certified weight was later verified by Kris Reynolds with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and the agency made Carroll’s state record official on June 29. The previous record had been on the books for only eight months.

“That amberjack was eating pretty good there before I caught it,” Carroll says. “The loin fillets on that fish were the size of ribeye steaks. When they cleaned it [at Seven Seas] They found a 12-inch vermilion snapper in its stomach and a few rays, which resemble stingrays.”