Will Pizzano of Virginia and his 24-pound yellow jack off Marathon. (Photo courtesy of Will Pizzano)
August 08, 2025
By Will Pizzano
Sometimes in fishing circles you might not know what you caught until it’s too late. Recently, I learned that fact the hard way. For the past 15 years, our large family from northern Virginia always looked forward to occasional vacations and fishing trips to the Florida Keys. My father fished the Keys a lot, mostly around Marathon.
One day during Christmas break, we took out our family boat, Las Sirenas , a 33-foot Boston Whaler Outrage, to try to do a little trolling with Capt. Chris Albronda, an out-of-town guide we had met at the tackle shop the day before. Since I didn’t know much about trolling for sailfish and wahoo, Chris agreed to come along and show us the ropes.
The day didn’t exactly go as planned. Eventually, we decided to come inshore into 136 feet of water and stop over one of the reefs just to see if we could put a few fish into the fishbox. I took out a 60-gram Johnny Jigs slow pitch jig I use for striper fishing in Chesapeake Bay, as we could see a school of fish on the fishfinder about 60 feet down.
I was committed. I was going to make sure something happened. I dropped the jig down and worked it back through that group of fish. Suddenly, I got hooked up. I thought it was an amberjack the way it fought. It was dogging me pretty good. When we gaffed it and it came over the side, I didn’t even recognize it even though I had caught many before. It was enormous so immediately we took some photos. It ended up being a yellow jack, but it was the biggest one I had ever seen.
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We went on to catch a mess of yellowtail snapper and other snappers, some mackerel and wound up with a pretty decent mahi-mahi, too. The yellow jack measured a whopping 34 inches in length. We Googled the International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record for yellow jack and saw it was pretty close to the 23-pound, 12-ounce fish brought in November 2013 in Duck Key. Back at the dock, we had one of those mechanical scales and it read 24 pounds.
We knew it was close and if we had applied for the record, we’d have to drive to Key West, 50 miles, to find a certified scale. Since we didn’t feel like doing that, we cleaned it, tossed it on the grill with some salt and pepper and some olive oil, and had a great dinner.
We’ll always have that story to share about how good that “world record yellow jack” actually tasted.
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This story was featured in the June 2025 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe .
