Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Medical student lands 359-lb grouper

November 13, 2007



THIBODAUX , La. --A medical student who blindfolds his friends to keep his favorite offshore fishing spot secret has come up with a record-beating fish -- a warsaw grouper weighing 359.1 pounds.



The giant hauled in by J.J. Tabor of Thibodaux is 12 ounces above the previous Louisiana state record, a state biologist confirmed.

It's been cut down to fillets. The first fillet weighed 53 pounds, Tabor said.

He caught it near an oil rig 70 miles south of Fourchon, in 400 feet of water. He won't give a more specific description.

'It's J.J.'s secret,' said Joey Rodrigue, a friend from Baton Rouge who joined Tabor and Tabor's father, John, on the record-making trip Saturday. 'I don't even know where I was. He blindfolds us on the way out.'

Tabor said he thought at first that his hook with a live hardtail on it had it the bottom 'until I felt the big head shake.'

Rodrigue steered away from the rig.

'I put myself in a harness and just had to lay back and fight,' J.J. Tabor said. 'It was about a 15 or 20 minute fight.'

Tabor cleaned the fish late Monday afternoon outside his father's auto repair shop in Thibodaux . 'We'll split it up,' he said. 'I'll make some phone calls and try to get rid of it fresh. The rest, we'll vacuum pack it and cook it later.'

Tabor says he believes the fish is about 33 years old. He plans to send an inner-ear bone called the otolith to a university in Florida where researchers can help determine the age of the fish.. He hopes to get the results in about four weeks.

The world record, caught off Florida in 1985, is 436 pounds, 12 ounces.

That's a bit sad heh.

Very sad seeing all those fish....

I wouldn't eat a fish that big... if it is 30 years old and that big god knows what heavy metals it may contain...LOL!

I would have let that thing go...

I guess one man's fish is another man poison!

You mean poissons, (insert bad french accent)

H.

dont fish that big accumulate a hell of alot of mercury over the years ?

i guess if they die from mercury poisoning then the gropers mates will be safe cause no-one else knows the fishing spot ..

You prolly couldn't put it back if it's been caught from a great depth, the lack of pressure on the fish causes their guts to expand.

Still they could of tryed

It was only from 400 feet of water... which is bugger all.

looks like you have tried 400 feet from the look of your avitar...
was it a 'free' dive?
LOL

Somehow think a few missed the point of this thread.

One issue on taking the biggest is called genetic erosion. Imagine in your system that you ate the fastest growing fish and bred the worst. Eventually, your size would trend downward.

This is what we do when we fish for trophies. By the way, it is also the result of high grading forest. That means going into a forest and taking the best of the trees and leaving the worst to repopulate.

You would never do that with cattle - but we assume nature will handle it just fine.

Not everywhere, CRTreeDude, as a Forestry Ing. "in the old country", it was my duty to make sure the best trees were marked as protected and left behind as a source of seeds.

I assume that would be France? Much of Europe now uses, I believe, a system called Dauerwald, which is the idea of a mixed aged forest managed for better tree genetics and future value. It takes a while to recover a forest that way, but it is definitely worth it - and not just for nature, but for the land owner.

This is definitely not true in most of the USA for example.

By the way, back to topic, if that Grouper was in a fish tank, given the concept of 3 kilos per 100 liters of water, just to support that single fish you would need 10,000 liters, and 20,000 liters of growbeds...

For one fish!

To feed it would require about nearly 5 kilos of food per day!