A Florida charter-fishing company is boasting about the catch and release of a giant roughtail stingray after a marathon struggle off Jacksonville Beach.
“After a brutal 7-hour fight we were able to land this monster right before sunset,” Florida Man Fishing Van stated Saturday via Instagram. “This was the first roughtail I have ever seen and it will be my [personal best] forever because I’m not doing it again.”
Giant stingray during release effort.
Owen Prior is “Florida Man.” His company delivers specialized beach-fishing adventures to individuals or groups, depending on their location and species they wish to target.
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The roughtail stingray is the largest whip-tailed stingray in the Atlantic. It can measure 8 feet across and weigh 600-plus pounds. Its tail is often much longer than its width, which Prior’s images reveal. (His catch was said to measure 12 feet long, including the tail.)
Roughtail stingrays, according to the National Aquarium, are named “for the thorny plates, or tubercles, that run along the outer part of their body and base of their tail.”
They boast highly venomous spines that are deployed in self-defense when a stingray lashes its tail.
Roughtail stingray closeup.
The stingrays, which inhabit both sides of the Atlantic, spend most of their time partially buried, ready to ambush small fish and invertebrates.
They rarely come into contact with humans but are harvested commercially on a small scale, marketed as fishmeal and oil, according to the National Aquarium.
They’re also targeted occasionally by anglers.
According to the International Game Fish Assn., the all-tackle world record stands at 405 pounds, for a roughtail stingray catch off Islamorada, Fla., in 1972.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: ‘Monster’ stingray caught during fishing charter at Florida beach