A few days ago a group of guys came into the office after their days’ fishing aboard Pisces 60 ft. Hatteras Shambala they were excited and sunburnt and eager to get some Pisces Sportfishing
shirts. We asked the group what they had caught and were stunned when
33 year old Brian Lindsey, a physician from Indianola, Mississippi ,
said that he had landed a 102 lb. dorado. We thought, well he’s
probably a first timer and confused, he probably got a marlin. So we
asked what color his fish was to which he replied “yellow”, intrigued,
we asked to see pictures. Brian’s dad, Tracy, a long time Pisces
angler, whipped out his camera and proceeded to show us a massive dorado
which looked big in photos but enormous in the video.
Our
first thought with our practiced eye, was “that looks like a 60 to 70
lb. fish”. So we asked how he had come up with weight and were told
that they had weighed it on a spring type hand scale and that it had
said 102 lbs., just before the fish had been taken away by the fillet
guys. One of the staff called the dock to tell the fillet guys NOT to
cut that fish up, but we were told it had been filleted as quickly as
possible due to the hot weather, so that the meat would not spoil. Now
we wanted to try and verify the weight if possible and at the same time
quickly entered the IGFA website to check the world record. If the fish
truly weighed 102 lbs., we knew without looking that this would be the
biggest dorado ever caught on rod and reel. The website revealed that
the all tackle world record (the largest dorado ever legally caught on
any kind of test line) was an 87 lb. fish caught in Costa Rica, a record
held since 1976.
We happened to have an identical scale in the office so decided to test it by asking Captain Tony’s
restaurant next door, for a product with a verified weight. They handed
us a 4.4 lb. block of cheese, which when weighed on the scale, showed
that the scale was pretty accurate. It just happened that a group of
scientists from the Mexican Fisheries Institute were having lunch at
Captain Tony’s so we asked them to help verify the weight. They asked
for the length of the fish, which was 66 inches and we were told that
the carcass weighed 36 lbs. They used a scientific formula which gave
them a result of 94 lbs., however, they said that they wanted to verify
this with one of their colleagues who is an expert in dorado and asked
for the photos and video – as of yet they have still not reached a final
conclusion. The fish had struck the silver and black trolled lure with
the ferocity of a marlin, just two miles offshore near Pozo de Cota on
the Pacific side and took Brian thirty minutes to bring to the boat on
50 lb. test line.
The jury is out
still, if the weight is true, this fish would have been the all tackle
world record, but a filleted fish cannot be a record… nevertheless this
was a magnificent fish and a remarkable achievement by Brian Lindsey.
It also shows that Cabo San Lucas is still a world class fishing
destination.
See the video below:
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