Fisherman reels in ‘once-in-a-lifetime fish’ from beach

Anglers often reel in fish over 50 pounds when out in the depths of the ocean aboard a vessel, but it’s not every day someone throws their line from shore and catches a giant one. That was the case for fisherman James Costa.

With his boat out of service for the past 10 months, Costa has been honing his craft off the beach and, on 19 Oct., while enjoying fishing with some friends, he hooked and reeled in the “biggest fish I’ve caught from the beach”, he told the Compass.

After 10 minutes of fighting, Costa reeled in his prize – a 60 pound red mangrove snapper, commonly known in Cayman as a ‘mangra’.

“I thought it may have … been a shark because that is what you accidentally hook most the time, and, of course, we bring them up, take the hook out and send them back in the water, but I was not expecting this, a fish that big,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

When asked where he caught the fish and the bait he used, he responded; “secret bait and some beach, somewhere. A good fisherman can never reveal his spots,” he laughed.

Family line

Costa, a generational Caymanian and the grandson of the fisherman Petrus Clemens van der Bol, known as Peter or ‘Dutchman’, has been throwing his line since he was a young boy and always wanted to follow in his late grandfathers footsteps.

“I talked to a lot of the old timers [and] my grandfather, and they always tell me about the fish they used to catch back in the day and how many fish they were and I was, like, I have to catch one of those big ones because I know they’re still around, but you just have to put in the time,” he said.

Costa certainly put in the time and it paid off. But he noted that this isn’t the biggest fish he has or helped reeled in.

Outside of trolling for barracudas, his father – Jerry Costa – would usually take him out on the boat where they often hooked the kinds of fish anglers tell stories about.

“We caught some pretty big marlin,” Costa recalled. “Growing up, all me and my dad used to fish for was marlin, and my dad claims to have the unofficial record of biggest marlin here in Cayman.

“This was well before I was born. He hooked and brought in about a 700-pound marlin at 12 Mile Bank, but they only got the approximate weight of it by the size of it; it was about 16 feet long.”

As for the mangra Costa reeled in, he said he sold the meat, and plans to keep a souvenir from it.

“I’m going to cut the jaw out and make a jaw-mount out of it and put it up in my house because that’s a once-in-a-lifetime fish.”