Holy Mackerel! Hilton Head fisherman got an extra passenger on his July 4th trip
There’s an old fishing lore that warns: Fish don’t bite during the full moon.
Jackson Tomaszewski, a Hilton Head Islander who’s been fishing all his life, says he inadvertently proved that warning right on July 4th — a full moon — when he caught a three-foot King Mackerel without it ever having the chance to bite on live bait.
That’s because it jumped out of the water and into his boat with a thud.
Tomaszewski said he and two friends were packing up for the day on Saturday and admiring the calm water about 15 miles off the southeast end of Hilton Head.
“It was like a lake out there. And out of nowhere this thing just came flying at us,” he said.
A King Mackerel, which Tomaszewski estimated to be between 35 and 40 pounds, jumped straight out of the water and landed on the friends’ empty boat seat before violently flopping on the boat deck.
“It almost took our heads off,” he said. “I knew exactly what it was. I’ve been fishing my whole life, and I’ve never caught one. I was literally praying to catch one of these things.”
Tomaszewski said the giant fish was likely chasing Spanish Mackerel, because several small fish in the vicinity jumped before the King Mackerel came clear out of the water.
The 21-year-old fisherman, a Gen Z at heart, started to record.
“We literally have no rods in the water,” he says on video. “It landed in the seat, it came flying at us like a freaking torpedo and busted the seat. I cannot believe this has happened. This is unbelievable.”
He posted the video to Snapchat, and TikTok, and Facebook and Instagram.
Take that, you folks who tell unbelievable fishing tales over pints in pubs. In this age of social media, today’s young fishermen inevitably have video to back up their tall tales.
Tomaszewski and his buddies cleaned the fish, and created fillets that he said were 2-1/2 feet long.
They brought the King Mackerel steaks to Tomaszewski’s father’s July 4th cookout, making them kings of the party.
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 12:02 PM.
