Silver Spring resident Jian Li found he’d landed more than a huge fish when he reeled in a 38-pound yellowedge grouper while on a charter boat off Ocean City last week—he’d also landed a record-setting catch.
The 43-inch fish caught Aug. 27 by Li, who fishes as a hobby, set the first record in Maryland for the heaviest yellowedge grouper in the Atlantic division, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
“When he pulled it up, we [were] really excited,” recalled Xicheng Zou, Li’s friend who was also on the boat. “Everyone dreams [of catching] a big fish.”
Zou said that Li, a native of China who was unavailable to speak to MoCo360 on Wednesday, goes fishing three or four times a year, and this was the first time he reeled in a fish of that size.
“The reason it got a state record was because of its remarkable size, and it was only 10 pounds under the world record,” Erik Zlokovitz, who works in recreational fisheries outreach for the DNR, told MoCo360 on Wednesday.
Li’s catch was just 10.6 pounds lighter than the 48.6-pound yellowedge grouper that holds the International Game Fish Association world record, according to the DNR. That fish was caught off Dauphin Island, Alabama, in June 2012.
Zou and Li were two of four anglers who headed out Aug. 27 on the Tiderunner, a charter boat operated by Capt. Chase Eberle.
After an unsuccessful attempt at fishing offshore for mahi mahi, the fishermen tried “deep dropping,” or fishing in deep ocean waters, at Poorman’s Canyon off Ocean City. They sank false albacore strip baits attached to heavy sinkers 420 feet down to search for large bottom fish, according to the DNR.
All four hooked large fish, but only Li was able to reel in a catch, according to the DNR. Zlokovitz noted that yellowedge groupers are more typically found between the waters of North Carolina and Brazil, but that anglers have been catching more yellowedge in the canyons off of Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey due to the use of the deep-drop fishing technique.
After docking, the anglers took photos with Li’s record-breaking fish. According to a DNR press release from Wednesday, Sunset Marina staff in Ocean City weighed the grouper on a certified scale and DNR biologist Gary Tyler confirmed the species.