KING CATCH: Ponte Vedra crew lands record fish at Greater Jacksonville Kingfish Tournament

In 43 years of the Greater Jacksonville Kingfish Tournament, no one had weighed in a fish as heavy as Dan Crowley did Friday.

But after years of pushing 300-pound defensive linemen around, maybe fighting a giant of the ocean wasn't so intimidating after all.

With timing and teamwork, Crowley's Ponte Vedra-based boat rewrote the record books with their 57.75-pound catch to win Friday's Greater Jacksonville Kingfish Tournament at Jim King Park at Sisters Creek.

The day's first boat to weigh in shortly after 3:20 p.m., Crowley's crew shattered the former record of 55.2 pounds belonging to Tommy Rady and his crew during the 2002 tournament.

"We've been fishing it for a long time… we've come close a couple times but never won it," said Travis Crowley, who brought the winning fish to the scales. "It would be awesome."

On a banner day for anglers in Northeast Florida's traditional big-fish event, crews reeled in four 50-pounders. Tournament officials couldn't immediately recall a comparable instance of four fish of that size arriving in a single day.

FINDING THE MONSTER FISH

At last year's kingfish tournament, golf stepped into the spotlight — a boat with British Open champion Cameron Smith and PGA Tour veteran Billy Horschel led the aggregate tournament for part of the afternoon. This year, football backgrounds from St. Johns County's Nease High School took center stage.

First, Travis Crowley anchored Nease's offensive line at left tackle, blocking for Tim Tebow on the Panthers' 2005 state champions. Then, younger brother Lucas Crowley grew into a star tackle-turned-center at Nease in the 2013 class: He played college football at the University of North Carolina, twice earned nominations for the Rimington Award as the best center in college football and spent NFL stints with Arizona, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Washington, although he did not take the field for a regular season game.

The magic moment arrived around 8 a.m. near the traditional Chum Hole not far from Mayport, a favored spot for generations in the hunt for kingfish.

"Our dad actually reeled it in, and Travis drove and I gaffed," said Lucas Crowley, who now owns victories over both the king of the kingfish and king of the defensive tackles — he made his first-ever UNC start as a true freshman in November 2013 against Aaron Donald of Pitt. "So it was a little teamwork."

As the first boat weighing in for the day, the Crowley crew watched and waited, an all-too-familiar feeling over the years. This time, the ending was different.

"We've seen a lot," Travis Crowley said. "You think you have it in the bag, and then somebody else brings one in."

BIG DAY ON THE WATER

Amid a scorching afternoon that brought a rare excessive heat warning from the National Weather Service, the kingfish bite lost none of its week-long boom.

The action started fast. Only a minute after Crowley's crew weighed in the first fish of the day, the boat of Billy Sohm of Green Cove Springs followed in the day's second boat with a 54.49-pound king. That fish came in only about 11 ounces below Rady's previous tournament record.

While Rady lost his big-fish record from 2002, he finished in the big money once more.

The crew aboard the Salt Life Food Shack weighed in a 52.84-pound fish in the late afternoon, which combined with a 30-pounder for a top-ranking two-fish aggregate of 83.13 pounds. Rady, who also netted the aggregate title in 2022, earned his second major award in as many years with the aggregate grand prize of $12,000. A.J. Anderson, from Glennville, Ga., placed second at 74.79 pounds, with DeLand's Louis Caruso third at 73.79 pounds and Jacksonville Beach's Austin Millard fourth at 66.82.

Other highlights included a 50.05-pound fish for Jacksonville's Marc Padgett and a 49.60-pounder from Chris Stephens, all of which would have easily won the top prize as recently as 2021.

Placing 1-2 in the Lady Angler division were the Yulee pair of Amber Adams (37.21 pounds) and Kelli Goar (33.95 pounds).

Tournament chairman Mel Hammock said the one-day general tournament drew 321 entries, in addition to 222 in Wednesday's offshore junior angler competition.

"I was confident that it was going to be a good weekend and we'd have a lot of good fish coming in, and we did," he said.

Football? Fishing? Maybe they're closer than you think.

"I don't know that [football] prepares you for this," Lucas Crowley said. "But it's a similar adrenaline rush as a game for sure."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Greater Jacksonville Kingfish Tournament: Dan Crowley, crew set record