How a 10-year-old Florida angler reeled in a sailfish during Gulf of Mexico tournament

Angler Dallas Thompson has accomplished quite a bit on the water in his young life. At just 10 years old, Thompson has crossed off a large variety of species from his catch list that many anglers dream of.

“We’ve been to the east coast targeting sharks and caught a 13-foot tiger shark recently. We’ve also climbed mountains at Yellowstone to get trout,” Dallas’ dad Dustin explained. “I remember when he caught his first goliath grouper, he went nuts. Now he’s probably caught 200 of them. We’re on our third boat and now offshore fish as much as we can.”

Fishing multiple times a week, Dallas can’t get enough of being on the water.

“He’ll be out for 14 hours and not want to come home, telling me, ‘The tide is about to get right,’ on some days. We’ll get home then go back out again the next day.”

Always thinking about their next fishing adventure, the Thompson fishing duo had big money and big kingfish on their brains when they entered the recent King of the Beach tournament.

“We were out chasing bait balls trolling blue runners,”

Dustin explained. “For a while, we couldn’t find the bait ball we were looking for in 40 feet of water and Dallas was saying we should move. I told him don’t give up, it will show and next thing you know, we could see it, so (we) headed over for it.”

When they got near the bait ball, something else showed up as well.

“We looked over and there was a sword that came out of the water in the middle of the bait. Dallas said ‘Daddy, that’s a marlin!’ When we saw it, the back right rod was slack and I told him to grab it. The fish was swimming at us. He reeled it tight, set the hook and that’s when the fish went airborne.”

The shocked and excited Dallas saw the billfish jumping 6 feet high, screaming he was now fighting a marlin. His dad watched without helping as the fish went on runs, circled the boat and jumped, giving the young angler all he could handle.

“It went by the trolling motor and around the engines. I just told him to be careful. He did it by himself until the end!”

While not a marlin, the billfish Dallas fought for 20 minutes was a rarely caught Gulf of Mexico sailfish around 50 inches in length. After a quick photo, it was returned to the water and released.

They didn’t win the kingfish tournament, but Dustin and Dallas left with a bittersweet memory the family will never forget.

“He cried for 30 minutes because he had to throw it back,” Dustin said. “He wanted to eat it!”