A South Florida charter boat made an astoundingly rare catch on Father’s Day, June 15. While daytime swordfishing, the crew hauled a giant opah up from 1,800-foot depths about 17 miles offshore from Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades.
The big, weird fish weighed 148 pounds, measured 53 inches long and 47.5 inches across. With the IGFA all-tackle world record weighing in at 180 pounds, 12 ounces, the Florida fish is certainly a big one, but the rarity of the catch is what makes it so special.
“I’ve been in this game for 23 years for a living, now, and that’s the first one I’ve seen,” said Capt. Richard Fairbanks, of Family Tradition Sportfishing. “I mean, I’ve seen them in real life in the fish houses from the longline boats in Hawaii, but never with my own eyes in my own boat.”
What’s an Opah?
Indeed, few people have seen an opah with their own eyes, especially on the Atlantic coast of Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission doesn’t even keep records for opah. Family Tradition mate Rex Lane called to inquire about submitting their fish as a state record and was told there’s no category because only a couple have ever been caught off Florida.
Opah are more frequently encountered in the Pacific Ocean, where they are thought to exist in greater numbers. California anglers and those fishing off Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula catch them occasionally while targeting other species, and they are welcome bycatch for commercial longliners fishing for bigeye tuna and swordfish in Hawaii. Yet, even where they are caught more frequently, they remain a prized catch, a rarity and an oddity.
Opah are the only identified warm-blooded fish. While some billfish, tunas and sharks thermoregulate localized parts of their bodies, opah are fully warm-blooded. This whole-body endothermy wasn’t discovered by NOAA scientists until 2015. Opah regulate their temperature and minimize heat loss with a unique gill design that uses warm blood from the body to heat colder blood returning from the gills.
Little is known about the behaviors of this weird species other than they are thought to inhabit depths from 150 to 1,700 feet, and that—like swordfish—they spend days down deep and come closer to the surface at night. They are also thought to be solitary fish, which makes them hard for anglers to target.
An Opah Caught on Swordfish Gear
Capt. Fairbanks trolled to the swordfish grounds that morning, but other than a couple of mahi and skipjack tuna on the way out, the crew hadn’t seen much action for about six hours.
The crew on Fairbanks’ 39-foot Yellowfin, Freebird, included veteran commercial swordfisher Laurel David, who was teaching Lane the ropes on his first-ever daytime swordfishing trip. Angler Austin Buckingham and his buddy Mike chartered the boat to put some meat in the freezer. After long hours of waiting for a swordfish bite, Fairbanks was about ready to pull up lines and boogie.
Daytime swordfishing is a battle with boredom. Using heavy duty Lindgren-Pitman electric reels, they dropped mahi bellies sewn onto brightly colored skirts to about 1,500-feet over an 1,800-foot bottom. They were fishing two set-ups, one on a tip rod and one a buoy rod. Both were rigged with 100-pound braid and long leaders of 300-pound mono sunk with 10 pounds of lead.
“I was going to troll home. I had to catch these guys some fish,” Fairbanks said. “They were looking for fish to take home, so I put a timeline on it, basically that we’ve got to go back to trolling and catch these guys some fish. Then we got a bite.”
Buoy’s Gone!
Lane said he was in a bit of a trance from hours of watching the buoy and the tip rod for a bite that can appear subtle with so much line out. At about 3:30 p.m., he was in the tower when the buoy came alive.
“All of a sudden it shot under the water and to the right, and it took me a couple seconds to process it,” Lane said. “Then I called out, ‘Buoy’s gone! Buoy’s gone!”
With the Lindgren-Pitman humming, the fight took 30 to 45 minutes, said Fairbanks. They thought they were battling a nice swordfish almost the entire time. Fairbanks said it fought like a 200- or 250-pound swordfish until it started pinwheeling near the surface.
Then they saw color and the odd shape of the fish. “Cap started screaming, “It’s an opah! It’s an Opah!” Lane said. “We were all freaking out!” The freaking out continued until they were able to gaff the big opah into the boat.
“The colors that come out of the thing, you can’t recreate,” Fairbanks said. “You see pictures and stuff, and it’s unrelated to a crayon box. You can’t recreate the colors, and the experience, now. I never dreamed in a million years of catching one of these things.”
Lane added: “The whole body is just a fluorescent orange, and the fins are like a fire red, and the top of its head is like a purply color. I didn’t even know it was ever really a possibility. It was just mind blowing. I’ve worked on boats all over the world, and this blows everything else out of the water. I still can’t believe this happened.”
What Does Opah Taste Like?
Fairbanks said there are several different cuts of meat on an opah, and they all have different texture and taste. Breaking down an opah for the table is more complex than most other fish, so they took their fish to Captain Clay and Sons Seafood Market to let fishmonger Reed Brand break it down.
“It’s different. It’s good,” said Fairbanks. “Some pieces taste like beef, like a cow, and you have to butcher it like a cow. Some pieces taste like sashimi.”
Lane said: “Some of it was like tuna. Some of it was a little tough. It has like four different cuts of meat that are completely different. I have these four little packages of different cuts of it, and they look like four different fish. One looks like mahi. One looks like tuna. One looks like a different, like lighter type of tuna, and one looks like bright orange salmon.”
All the anglers on the boat are having replica mounts of the fish made, courtesy of Buckingham.
