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Trout teases crowd with size, weight For at least 12 hours last weekend, the dock was a'rockin' at Sportsman Marina in Orange Beach. A huge speckled trout (spotted seatrout) had been caught by 13-year-old Madeline Holden and the word spread like wildfire. The frenzy intensified when her dad, Danny Holden, borrowed a pair of tube-type spring scales to weigh the trout. "I had another person read it twice, and it said 13 pounds, 2 ounces," Danny said. Of course, those weren't certified scales, but the elder Holden was so excited he called Marine Resources Enforcement Officer Bob Hastings at about 10:30 p.m. Hastings told Holden to ice the fish down and he'd be there about 8 a.m. At 6:30 a.m. my phone rang. I fully expected it to be my buddy, Lee Rivenbark, in Fairhope telling me there was a jubilee in progress on the Eastern Shore. Rivenbark always seems to have the knack of calling me just as a jubilee is in its waning moments. However, I perked up when Hastings told me of the big trout, and I headed to Orange Beach to see the fish that might possibly dislodge a 27-year-old state record. In the ice chest, the fish looked huge and I couldn't wait to hear the story of how this beautiful 13-year-old had tamed this gator trout. "It was kind of a family thing," Danny explained. "Madeline came down to stay on the boat I work on, the Sound Advice that belongs to Mr. John McGinnis. I'd seen some big fish around the boat and I'd hung a green light over the bow. I got some live shrimp, but I had to do some running around to find the shrimp. I went to Mo's and he didn't have any. I found some at Top Gun Tackle and bought three dozen." The first fish Madeline caught was an undersized redfish, which was quickly returned to the water. The second bite was a mystery fish. It cut her 10-pound test line before she had a chance to see what it was. "I don't know whether that fish that cut her off was a redfish or big speckled trout," Danny said. "I re-rigged and that's when she got the bite. Several men had seen this fish around the docks, but they couldn't get her to bite anything. It took a 13-year-old to catch the fish." Madeline was about to take a break from fishing when everything changed in a flash. "I was just sitting there dangling my feet in the water, and I was about to go inside and eat," she said. "Then I looked down and this fish was looking straight at my shrimp. I stood up real slow, and then that fish went so fast I could hardly see it. It bit that shrimp so hard. I yanked it so hard and screamed bloody murder, 'dad, dad.' "Dad just dropped on his stomach to try to get it with the net, but the net was too small. A guy on the end of the dock came down with the big net and we caught it. Daddy was hollering, 'hold it high, hold it high.' She tried to go under the boat and dock, but I wouldn't let her. And the hook was barely in its mouth." Danny said the fight didn't last long, but there were plenty of anxious moments. "I almost knocked it off with the net once," he said. "I probably swiped at the fish four or five times before I got her. Somebody threw the big net on my back. I rolled over and grabbed the net and finally got the fish in it. It was a yellowmouthed trout with both her fangs. I can't believe she didn't shear that 10-pound line. It was some Ande line I'd had in my tackle box. I had just spooled it on her reel." Everybody at the marina then started gravitating toward the spot with all the commotion. "Everybody started ganging up and coming over there," Madeline said. "A ton of people were taking pictures. One guy told my dad he'd been trying to catch that fish forever. I think he was a little mad. When he was walking off, I said, 'I caught your fish.'" The elder Holden has been around Orange Beach long enough to know about the existing state record of 12 pounds, 4 ounces caught on May 6, 1980 by W.A. Ducharme. "I knew the old man, Mr. Ducharme," Danny said. "He was about 90 years old when he caught that fish. He caught it right over here on the wall (at Perdido Pass). He used to fish with balloons. He'd blow up a balloon a little bit and float his bait just off the bottom. I watched that old man for years. He had an old two-tone Dodge truck with a camper on it. All he fished for was the gatormouth trout. "At the time, I worked for the city and I was at the wall when he caught that trout in 1980. Every year, he'd come down and fish for trout. He wore an old long bill fishing hat and he was at Perdido Pass every day, fishing for those big trout." Much to the Holdens' chagrin, they discovered those borrowed scales were way, way off. On certified scales at Outcast Marina, the fish hit 7.54 pounds, which shocked everybody who had seen the fish. The tale of the tape told the story, however. The fish hadn't been measured. With Hastings' yard stick, the fish measured 28 inches. If a trout is landed that bumps Ducharme's from the record books, it's going to be longer than 30 inches. As an example, the Texas state record is 13 pounds, 9 ounces and the fish was 33.75 inches long. Although Madeline's fish wasn't a record, it was still quite an accomplishment. I've been fishing for speckled trout for more than 30 years and my biggest trout is 6.6 pounds. "This is what fishing is all about - getting over-excited," Danny said after reality drained the adrenaline. "That's what we did. But that's the kind of fish you get excited about. I thought Baby Girl had really done something and I was really behind her. It was exciting for a while. But it's a great fish for a 13-year-old to catch. She still did a good job to catch that fish. It hurts a little bit now, but we're going fishing again tonight. It's not going to stop us. And we'll do better. "But the first thing I'm going to do is buy some new scales." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
