The 6-man crew of the 38-foot Freeman catamaran boat Chicken Ship left the Shellman’s Bluff, Georgia, inlet at 4 a.m. on May 5. It was a long 100 mile run over calm water before the anglers set out trolling lines near the Gulf Stream about 7 a.m.
“I was slated to be the first person on a rod that got a strike,” said 17-year-old Cade Quick. “We hadn’t fished long and – ‘Wham’ – we got a hit on the left long outrigger. A fish took a blue-and-white chugger lure with a ballyhoo bait. I got on the rod, free-spooled the reel a few seconds, then set the hook.
“The fish did nothing crazy. It was a usual kind of fight. It jumped once and we knew it was a good dolphin. I fought it for about 10 minutes before getting it to the boat using 30-pound test line and an Avet reel.”
Jackson Fries gaffed the fish and hauled it aboard the boat, owned by his father Mikell Fries. Also on board were Jonathan Fries, Ryan Bradford and John Micheal Thompson
The anglers put the big dolphin in an iced fish box and kept on trolling near a ledge drop off in 300 feet of water.
Through the day they caught several other smaller dolphin, a wahoo and blackfin tuna. Then about mid-afternoon they made the long boat run back to shore.
Surprise Record
“We didn’t think much about how big my dolphin was until we got back to the boat dock,” said Quick, who’ll be a high school senior this fall at Pinewood Christian Academy in Claxton, Ga. “The fish was on ice all day, and at the dock we weighed it at 70-pounds. That’s when we decided to have it weighed on certified scales.”
They didn’t get it officially weighed by Georgia’s DNR until the next day, and it likely lost some weight.
On certified scales May 6, the 56-inch-long fish with a 36.5-inch girth weighed 68-pounds, 9.28-ounces.
While Quick’s fish is the heaviest dolphin ever recorded caught in Georgia, it will go into the record books as a “tie” with the current state record. That record was set in April 2022 by James Roberts of Midway, Ga. with a 68-pound, 1.6-ounce dolphin.
Georgia state records for fish between 20 and 100 pounds must exceed the existing record by at least 8 ounces to break it, according to Tyler Jones, Public Information Officer for the Coastal Resources Division.
So, Quick’s catch officially ties the current state record dolphin, even though it weighed half a pound more than Robert’s fish from 2022.
The young offshore fishing crew of the Chicken Ship boat fish together five or six times per year. So more offshore trips will be made soon, said Quick.
“We’re also thinking about having a taxidermist make a replica mount of my dolphin,” said Quick, who also works at Thompson Boatworks in Glennville. “It’s not every day we catch a fish like that one.”
