We were casting to pods of false albacore sipping bait off the surface near Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, when reports of a greyhounding Atlantic bluefin tuna crackled over the VHF radio. The 800-pounder was apparently gobbling up 20-pound blackfin tuna like breakfast sausages and making hash browns out of false albacore. “I didn’t know a Volkswagen Bus could fly,” my friend Kary Via piped in over the radio.
I didn’t get to see the bluefin that morning last year, but the reports reminded me of another large fish that is something of a YouTube favorite, the goliath grouper. I remember watching a video showing an angler in South Florida leadering a shark next to the boat as a pair of brown blobs swirled beneath it. In an instant, a goliath grouper opens its hatchback-size mouth, consumes the shark, then swims off as if it had eaten a cocktail olive off a toothpick. Impressive.
The goliath grouper today is a controversial fish that is at once despised, loved, misunderstood and considered critically important. What isn’t up for debate is
