Record skipjack tuna hit an Ilander/ballyhoo combo
Lilli Kirkland of James Island was fishing with her family and Bubba Simmons on June 3 when she caught the pending S.C. state record skipjack tuna. They were fishing 105 miles off the coast of Charleston. Her fish beat the previous record by more than two pounds.
Kirkland said her dad was up top and pointed out a big school of what they thought were dolphins breaking the surface. That’s when she released some line on one of the reels they were trolling with.
“My dad was up on the flybridge, and what looked like dolphins were all over the top of the water. I picked up a rod and I let some of the line out. And next thing you know, I had a fish on,” she said.
The fish hit a blue and white Ilander with a ballyhoo.
The young angler had recently caught her first blue marlin, and she’d caught her share of dolphins on the current trip. So she asked if anyone else wanted to reel this fish in.
“I was going to let whoever else wanted it to reel in the fish. But nobody got in the chair, so I got in the chair. Everyone thought it was a dolphin until it came up. It took about 30 minutes, and it was fighting hard. It was taking line out constantly,” Kirkland said.
Fish bottomed out Kirkland’s scale
Once the fish was in the boat and they identified it as a skipjack tuna, Kirkland said they all knew it was exceptionally big for that species.
“We knew it was big, but we didn’t really know how big it was. So we just didn’t really worry about it. Then we got back to the dock and looked up the state record and it was 25 pounds,” she said.
It had been a long day, and it was pretty late when they got back to the dock. So they left the fish on ice overnight, then came back the next morning with a scale. Their scale only measured up to 25 pounds and the fish bottomed it out. They took the fish to Haddrell’s Point Tackle to get it weighed on a certified scale.
“It weighed 28 pounds and 8 ounces,” she said. “They told us we needed to take it to the DNR.”
They took the fish to the SCDNR station on James Island. There, officials measured the fish and started the paperwork needed to certify it as the new state record.
Kirkland hopes to fish in the Carolina Billfish Classic, the opening leg of this year’s Governor’s Cup Billfishing Tournament which starts this Thursday out of Charleston Harbor Resort. She took third-place honors in the youth category during the 2019 Governor’s Cup Bohicket tournament. And with the luck she’s had so far this year, any boat will be fortunate to have her onboard.
South Carolina’s previous skipjack state record was set in 1986 by D.L. Stubbs. He was also fishing out of Charleston. His fish weighed 25 pounds, 14 ounces.
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