While fishing for swordfish off Destin, Florida, in 2014, Ferdinand Lindmayer from Munich, Germany, assisted in tagging a 30-pound swordfish with Capt. Tim Kline of Recess Fishing Charters in Pensacola.
While fishing for swordfish off Destin in nearly the very same spot on May 30, 2017 with Capt. Adam Peeples (One Shot Fishing Charters, and one of Sport Fishing’s Top Charter Captains of the Year in 2016), Lindmayer hooked and boated the very same swordfish, which now weighed 140 pounds. The bite came late in the day and after a two-hour battle, the broadbill was in the boat.
But the what-are-the-chances? moment wasn’t initially obvious to Peeples and Lindmayer. Only a couple of weeks later, when they received tag information back from the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Cooperative Tagging Center, did they realize the fish was the same one the angler had caught three years earlier.
