12-foot-long smalltooth sawfish

[BentHook]

Melbourne Beach,Fla
http://ccs.flatoday.com/fe/Outdoors/outdoorsstoryS0605FISHH.htm

[Surfrat]

Freakin' cooilio,.. glad to see they got it back in safely.

;)

[BIONICBOBNJ]

Rare indeed. I thought that species was more likley to be found in Austrailian waters, but still rare down under also.

[Jolly Roger]

Nice, I think the 150# is way low, maybe 300#

[Sea-Slug]

Awesome catch/release.

[Old salt]

Looks a lot bigger than 150 to me too. Would love to one of those on PINS sometime.

[GarFisher]

Years back they caught some monster sawfish off of Bob Hall Pier I've heard, but sadly they seem to have gone the way of giant Jewfish. Except for a rare juvenile specimen they're mostly in the stories the old timers tell. Maybe someday they'll be back with proper conservation practices. I imagine catching a 12ft+ Tiger shark is more likely than a 6 ft sawfish but saying that and being prone to eat my own words watch Oz pull one out of the surf in the next few months.lol

[speckle-catcher]

One of my coworkers grandfather holds the TX state record for both Sawfish @ 739# and Jewfish (goliath grouper) @ 551#. They were caught back in 37 & 39, off a pier that you had to be boated to off of Galveston Island.

[purpletdude]

about my grandfathers' state record fish due to TP &W wanting to have some reproductions made of the record Goliath Groupers head and the record sawfish bill to display at Sea Center Texas in Lake Jackson. Both of these fish were World records at the time. Matter of fact, the sawfish record wasn't broken until 1960 and the biologist believe that the fish that broke gramps record was probably a large tooth sawfish instead of a small tooth like gramps. Evidentally, small tooth sawfish don't inhabit the waters around panama, where the record was broken....so it would still be the world record small tooth today.

Another interesting fact....the length of either fish is not listed in TP&W records, but I found a Florida Sawfish site on the net that documents gramps sawfish at 14'-6"...it weighed 736 lbs.

I used to stay at their house on weekends as a kid and had that big ol Jewfish head staring at me at night...looked like he could eat me in one big bite....lol.

Gramps (Gus Pangarakis) has been dead for about 25 years. The head of that fish is still over the fire place and next time I'm there I'll catch a pic of it to show ya'll.

tight lines to all....

[shrky2413]

Cool story purpletdude. You can go to www.bobhallpier.com (http://www.bobhallpier.com/) and look in the history section. They have some pics of one or two there.