Mark Boles of Dublin, Georgia, and three of his friends and relatives were on their annual fishing trip off Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, with Capt. Austin Aycock.
On June 3, they ran 55 miles offshore, trolled initially for dolphin, then anchored to send live menhaden baits deep for bottomfish.
“It was a great day, seas flat, sun bright and the fish were hungry,” said Aycock, age 26, and an eight-year charter captain veteran. “We caught dolphin to 15 pounds while trolling, then anchored to fish a drop off in 160 feet of water. We caught a lot of everything – triggerfish, gag grouper, scamp, amberjacks, vermilion snapper and some big mutton snapper.”
Late that afternoon, the anglers ran back to Ocean Isle Fishing Center to unload their catch from Aycock’s 33 World Cat catamaran boat Carolina Cat, powered by twin 300 Yamaha outboards.
“At the marina, someone asked if I’d heard about a big new-record mutton snapper someone caught up off Topsail Beach,” Aycock told Wired2fish. “I hadn’t and asked how big the fish was. The guy at the marina said it was ’17 pounds, 2 ounces.‘ I told him we had fish bigger than that in our cooler that we’d caught that day.”
Aycock says anglers aboard his boat that day had five mutton snapper each weighing 15 pounds or more. The biggest was a 17-pound, 12.8-ounce fish that Mark Boles caught that day. Boles’ big mutton snapper was weighed on certified scales at Ocean Isle Fishing Center. It measured 33 inches in length with a 25.4-inch girth.
He filled out all the paperwork required by North Carolina fisheries, and Boles’ catch has been certified as the state’s new mutton snapper record.
“I don’t know how long Mark’s fish will maintain the record,” said Aycock with a chuckle. “I’ve had plenty of bigger muttons caught from my boat over the years, some to 25 pounds or so. But for now, Mark’s fish is the top one for the state.”
The International Game Fish Association record for mutton snapper is 30.4 pounds, caught in 1998 in the Dry Tortugas off South Florida.
“We’ve had better mutton snapper fishing off North Carolina over the last five years,” added Aycock. “I’m sure more record fish will be caught soon here – maybe even this summer.”
