19-pound mangrove snapper will best current record by more than 5 pounds
Offshore oilfield worker Marty Trahan thought he had caught the fish of his life last summer when he landed a 31-pound red snapper, but Trahan cranked up a fish Monday (June 6)that may propel him into Louisiana’s fishing immortality.
While between shifts on a platform in South Marsh Island 128, Trahan and some other workers decided to kill time dropping baits to the myriad fish in the aquarium-clear water beneath them.
“We were on one side catching red snapper, and I told the guys, ‘I’m going to go catch some mangroves,'” Trahan said.
And he did just that.
The 44-year-old Lafayette resident had earlier dropped down a diamond jig and caught a jack crevalle that he and his buddies were using as cut bait.
Trahan impaled a piece of the fresh meat on his hook, and dropped down to his favorite corner.
“Last year, I caught about 20 mangroves off this one corner,” he said.
On this drop, however, a mangrove darted out, and almost immediately snapped his 80-pound braided line.
“I then tied on a swivel with an 80-pound mono leader,” Trahan said.
He made another drop, and watched trash fish peck at his cut bait. When another big mangrove darted out from under the platform, Trahan instinctively jerked the bait out of the water.
“When I put it back down, he nailed it,” he said.
Trahan knew the fish was a monster, and it soon showed its displeasure, pulling the line into the platform three times.
“I was calling for help,” Trahan said. “I thought I was going to lose him.”
The fight was particularly challenging considering Trahan was 30 feet above the water’s surface.
Finally, though, the fish succumbed, and nobody on the platform could believe their eyes. It was an absolutely massive mangrove snapper.
Trahan weighed it on a handheld scale, and the LEDs showed 19-11. He won’t be able to have it officially weighed until Thursday, when he arrives back on dry land.
If certified, the fish would destroy the previous mangrove record of 14.36 pounds.
Retired fisheries biologist Jerald Horst, after viewing the photo of the fish, said it will have to be examined closely to ensure it is in fact a mangrove and not a cubera snapper.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Trahan’s fish was later determined by a state fisheries biologist to be a yellow or dog snapper, for which there are no state records kept.