Much of the PGA world was focused on The Players Championship at Sawgrass (which features one of golf’s best fishing holes: the island green of 17), but one pro, Vaughn Taylor was too busy thinking about a fish of a lifetime on the water near his hometown of Evans, Ga. to golf in Florida this weekend.
Taylor was fishing a bucktail jig on Monday, May 7 when he hooked into something so big, he couldn’t even get it to move. Taylor did get it to move, and when he did, he found a 56-pound, 2-ounce striped bass, setting the new Savannah River record.
“My biggest previous one was 11 pounds, so this was huge for me,” said Taylor, who has two career PGA Tour titles, according to The Augusta Chronicle. “I had heard of 20 pounders out there and hoped maybe I’d catch one some day.”
The bass was so big that Taylor almost couldn’t get it in the boat, and had to lay down on the bow, grab it under it’s gills and roll it over the boat‘s side. The fish didn’t fit in the livewell or the cooler. But, he bought a bigger cooler and took the fish to Thompson, Ga. where a fisheries biologist certified the weight, and official measurements at 46.5 inches and estimated its age at about 15 years.
It breaks the existing Savannah River record by 15 pounds. -Brian McClintock
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