OCEAN CITY, Md. — A Lancaster angler hauled in a massive, 644.9-pound thresher shark at a fishing tournament in Ocean City, Maryland, temporarily setting a Maryland state record.
Nick Skidmore was competing in the 22nd annual Mako Mania Tournament Saturday when he caught the giant fish, battling it for more than two hours.
Skidmore and crewmates Ryan Oberholtzer and Brandon Miller were aboard the Fishful Thinking, a 25-foot fishing boat that launched from the Bahia Marina in Ocean City for the tournament.
“It was an epic battle between the boat and trying to get the fish to cooperate and get it into a position we could actually take it,” Skidmore told the York Daily Record. “I couldn’t have done it without my two cohorts on the boat.”
Skidmore said he landed the shark about 10 minutes after putting his lines in the water for the first time, at about 7:40 a.m. He battled the fish for about two and a half hours before the shark began to lose its stamina. The crew finally shot the fish to end the fight and bring it aboard the boat.
After the fish was weighed at the marina, Skidmore won the tournament’s thresher category prize, earning him $6,200.
Though the fish’s weight set the state record by two pounds, Skidmore later learned that his new mark will not stand because of the crew’s decision to shoot the fish to end the struggle to bring it in.
” I just got word from the Maryland (Department of Natural Resources) that because I dispatched the fish quickly by shooting it, it is being disqualified for the Maryland state record,” Skidmore said in an email to FOX43. “I guess from now on I should drag the fish behind the boat for 30-40 min and make it suffer by drowning it.”
Still, as fish stories go, Skidmore’s will remain tough to top.
