Yvonne Norman and her brother Will Van Duyn were trolling live menhaden around Nine Mile Reef off St. Augustine on June 16 when they caught a fish that will likely break a 40-year-old world record.
“It was just a few days before National Go Fishing day when Will and I headed offshore,” Norman, a lifelong angler, tells Outdoor Life. “We had lots of live baits in our bait well and put out a couple wire-leader trolling rigs for kingfish.”
It was a great fishing day, says Norman. They caught kingfish, a big dolphin, several cobia – including a 50-pounder that Van Duyn landed. They also spotted some giant sharks cruising around the reef. One was a 10-foot-long hammerhead, or about half the size of Will’s 20-foot center console boat.
“We lost a couple hooked kingfish to sharks,” says Norman, of Lake Asbury, Florida where she owns a cleaning service. “Sharks were a real problem, and we saw a giant bull shark easing around and under our boat.”
About 11 a.m. one of their trolling rods jumped from a fish strike, and Norman grabbed it. The fish made a long, powerful, deep run, and Norman thought she had hooked a shark.
“It stayed deep, and was really strong,” she says. “It made about five or six runs, and it took me about 20 minutes to get it near the boat. When it came close I saw how silver it was and didn’t really know what kind of fish it was.”
That’s when the big bull shark they’d been watching came out from underneath their boat.
“I tried to get my fish to one side of our boat away from the bull shark, and Will was trying to gaff it and get it into our boat,” Norman says. “It was pretty wild there for awhile. Will tried three times to gaff the fish before he hit it and hauled it aboard.”
Luckily the shark didn’t bite her prized catch, and it took the siblings a few minutes to realize what Norman had caught and just how big it was. African pompano (members of the jack family) are tropical marine fish that are widely distributed around the world and they’re known for being exceptionally strong fighters.
“The whole thing was a miracle that I caught the fish and a shark didn’t take it,” she says. “We looked up records for African pompano and realized it might be a record breaker.”
The fish was too big for the small boat’s ice chest. So they put towels over the fish with ice bags on top to keep it cool. Then they ran back to the public boat ramp in St. Augustine and took the fish to a tackle shop to have it weighed. But the shop didn’t have a certified scale.
“We took the fish home and weighed it on a scale and it read 40-pounds,” says Norman. “I knew we had to get it weighed on certified scales.”
They then took the pompano to Beamish Custom Tackle in St. Augustine, where owner Roland Beamis used a certified scale to weigh it. The 44-inch-long fish officially weighed 40.08 pounds. Several people witnessed the weighing, including a pair of policemen who happened to be in the shop.
Norman used 20-pound class tackle to catch her African pompano. She will be submitting her leader and line samples used in her catch, along with paperwork to the International Game Fish Association for a new woman’s 20-pound test line class record for African pompano.
The current International Game Fish Association 20-pound line world record for African pompano is a 39-pound, 5-ounce fish caught in April 1985 by Karen Hogan near Fort Pierce, Florida.
“I pray for good fishing all the time when we’re out on the water,” says Norman. “I think a guiding hand was with us that day because Will’s kingfish trolling rods, reels, and fishing line are 16 years old. I’m glad he takes such good care of his tackle.”
The all-tackle world record weighs 50 pounds, 8 ounces and was caught by Tom Sargent off the coast of Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1990, according to the IGFA.
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