| Date | Weight | Angler | Category |
| 7/8/11 | 3.69 Lbs | John Billings | Electric Reel |
| 8/19/11 | 2.63 Lbs | Brent Julliert | Rod and Reel |
On July 8, 2011 I decided to have the crew drop on a new area which looked interesting on the bathymetric charts. The water was a little deeper than I usually fish, but on the first drop, both the Diawa and Kristal electric reels had instant bites. When I brought the Diawa up, I had what looked like a spineycheek scorpionfish…small and fairly common. John Billings brought up 2 fish on the Kristal… One was the same as the one I had caught, but somewhat larger, the other was a Cuban Dogfish. Turned out both fish were larger than the existing state records on electric reel for those species, so John ended up with two new state records in a single drop…which of itself is probably a record.
When we had them examined by the TP&W Biologists, we learned that the scorpionfish was actualy a blackbelly rosefish, something common in the Bahamas, but pretty rare off the Texas Coast. Either way, John ended up with the 3.69Lb state record for this species.
About one month later, while fishing the same area, Brent Julliert managed to boat two at the same time on a knife jig using a regular rod and reel, the larger of which set the first rod and reel record for this species.
