- April 25, 2024
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Cathy Sanders holds up the certificate she received in the mail from the Georgia Saltwater Game Fish Records Program. Courtesy photo
Cathy Sanders holds up the record Florida pompano she caught on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Courtesy photo
Sanders' certificate for her Georgia state record Florida pompano. Courtesy photo
Cathy Sanders with the Florida pompano she caught on St. Simons Island. Courtesy photo
When Cathy Sanders caught a Florida pompano during a redfish tournament on St. Simons Island, Georgia, she considered eating it. She's glad she didn't. It turned out to be a record fish in Georgia.
"All the Georgia people were like, 'Whoa, we don't catch those here. We don't get them that big,' said Sanders, who lives in Palm Coast. "I just didn't think too much of it because for Florida, it was not a very big pompano. It was like just barely keeper size for here."
"All the Georgia people were like, 'Whoa, we don't catch those here. We don't get them that big.' I just didn't think too much of it, because for Florida, it was not a very big pompano. It was like just barely keeper size for here."
— CATHY SANDERS
Instead of bringing it home and eating it, she labeled it and put it in her freezer and looked up the women's record for Florida pompano in Georgia, which was 1 pound, 7 ounces by Laura Cheek in 1982. Sanders' pompano measured 12 inches from the fork in the tail to the snout and weighed 1 pound, 7.68 ounces. Under the rules set by the Georgia Saltwater Game Fish Records Program, any fish exceeding a record by less than four ounces qualifies as a tie.
So Sanders' Florida pompano, which would be one inch longer than the minimum keeper length in Florida, tied a 40-year-old women's record in Georgia.
Sanders is the first recipient of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' newly designed state record certificate, which features an image of the record-setting species, a gold-color embossed state seal, and signatures from the governor, commissioner of DNR, and director of DNR’s Coastal Resources Division.
Sanders, who caught the fish on Oct. 9, received her certificate on Oct. 24. It was her first record catch.
She was surf fishing in a redfish tournament benefiting the Kids Can Fish Foundation. Her husband Andy was a volunteer judge for the tournament. Hardly anybody was catching redfish, she said.
"There were 177 people fishing and maybe 20 to 25 people caught redfish in the whole tournament," Sanders said. "When I wasn't catching redfish, I started baiting for my friend who lives up in that area in Georgia. He said they catch whiting there all the time, which the redfish love to eat. So I said, 'Let's catch some whiting then.' So I took one of my lines — we were only allowed two lines in the water — and started baiting it for whiting. I brought my own salted shrimp and Fishbites and stuff. So, I started throwing that out and we started catching whiting left and right."
The next day was the same. Sanders caught more whiting for fresh bait for when the redfish would show up. And then all of a sudden, she had a pompano on her line.
"I think right before that I had a pompano on the line too, because my line went slack, which, if you fish down here, you know if your line goes slack you've got a pompano. And then it popped off, which happens all the time with pompano in the wash and when the waves are coming up to the shore. It popped off my line, so I threw it back out, and that's when I caught the record pompano."
Sanders moved to Flagler County in 2020 from Central New York where she did freshwater fishing in the Erie Canal and the Thousand Islands area in the St. Lawrence River.
"It was more of a hobby that I did every once in a while," she said. "When we moved down here I saw people fishing on the beach, and I was like, 'Oh yeah.'"
Late last year she started her own business, Fishin' Girl, where does surf fishing charters, teaching people how to fish on the beach. And she started an online community for women who love to fish. Her website is fishingirl.com.
The Georgia record pompano is her best catch ever, she said, because it is record fish and was very unexpected.
"I posted it on my YouTube channel and I was laughing a lot, because none of the locals knew the regulations (for keeper length), and we're sitting there looking it up, and they're like, 'they don't catch these things here.' So it's just kind of fun to be able to catch something in a place where you know they don't really see that type of fish, not at that size at least."
To watch video of Cathy Sanders catching the record fish, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEDEKH3T88Y.
