As we enter the season of giving, we’d like to give a “reel” big thank you to all our nearly 1,400 Catch a Florida Memory participants and partners who helped us reach over 15,000 saltwater fish submissions and 2,800 achievements recognized so far! Having your support and watching you all make the most out of this strange year has inspired us as we prepare for some real big things in 2021. But before we re-bait the hook for next year, we would like to look back at what has been a grand slam of a fishing year for so many of you.
It’s not uncommon for us to see fishing records broken in the state of Florida. This year was no exception with a monster catch coming out of the 2020 Pelagic Shamrock Shootout. One might say that Anthony Beau Kelly and his fishing mates found a field of four-leaf clovers as they landed an all-time Florida state record bigeye tuna. At a whopping 71 inches and 194.8 pounds, this tunny was the pot of gold that Kelly and his mates were looking for in the tournament.
This year, we also recognized three new additions to our Grand Slam Tier 1 list – and that’s a big deal. We’d like to send a huge congratulations to Richard Brundage, John Dobbins and George Saridakis on this whale of an accomplishment. Dobbins qualified with several Family Grand Slams, a Bay and Estuary Grand Slam and multiple Inshore Grand Slams, while Saridakis got on this list with a Reefs and Rubble Grand Slam, an Inshore Grand Slam and a Family Grand Slam. Brundage recently made the list, with many of his qualifying catches occurring in November of this year, landing him an Inshore Grand Slam, Family Grand Slam and Shoreline Grand Slam.
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