Orange Beach, Ala. – (OBA) – When Capt. Jeff Shoults of the Destin-based Mollie and his crew of fishermen boated the 776-pound blue marlin on May 20, he found it hard to concentrate on continuing to fish or fishing for other species in the Orange Beach Billfish Classic.

“We didn’t spend a whole lot of time fishing after that,” Shoults said with a laugh. “When you catch the biggest one you’ve ever caught you think about it and go ‘well, am I really going to catch one any bigger or do we just need to go home?’ We just got away home.”

Shoults and crew traveled about 250 miles off shore to boat the big marlin with angler Brian Stover on the rod and reel.

“We were live-baiting with a blackfin tuna,” Shoults said. “The average blackfin we use is probably three to eight pounds. When you’re live-baiting you call it trolling but you’re really only moving about one to two knots. I guess you’d say slow trolling.”

It took the crew four hours to haul the marlin after it was hooked.

“The last two hours we could look down and see her we just couldn’t get her to come up,” Shoults said. “She was just too heavy. We had to wait on her to get tired and make a mistake and she finally did.”

Putting distance between your boat and other fishermen led him to the deep water versus areas closer to shore.

“It’s just a matter of getting to oil rigs that are not fished very often,” Shoults said. “You’ve got the oil rigs right off of Orange Beach that get fished if not daily they get fished every other day. If you’re willing to travel that further distance you get into oil rigs that are fished a whole lot less. They’re probably fished once or twice a month much less once a week. That’s the object of going that far just to get away from everybody else.”

The first oil rig out of Orange Beach is about 60 miles out and Shoults said the other three blue marlins caught in the tournament were all caught within 120 miles of Orange Beach.

Shoults said the 776-pound fish will be donated to area food banks and other needy organizations.

“That’s the biggest one I’ve ever boated in 35 years,” he said. “The next largest was 666 pounds and we caught that in the grand championship a couple of years back. We won the triple crown in 2017, we won the Boat of the Year by In the Bite magazine in 2020. We’ve had a successful last four or five years."

That can make for some good weekends on the water including on May 20.

“We had a great weekend,” Shoults said. “Perfect, actually.”

The Alabama state record marlin was a 851.9-pounder caught by Ginger Myers on the Fleur-de-lis on July 5, 2020, off of Orange Beach.