While fishing offshore wrecks in search of big tautog earlier this month, Long Island angler, Kyle Cassidy hooked a large fish that fought, at first, like a big blackfish. As it came into view, instead of the brown sides and white belly of a big tog, Cassidy instead saw the silver flash and hubcap shape of a gigantic porgy. For a moment, Cassidy thought he had caught a world-record-smashing scup, until, after he weighed the fish, and got a closer look at its oddly-shaped head.
The fish turned out to be a jolthead porgy, a large, southern relative of our scup that lives on reefs and wrecks from North Carolina to Florida, and can grow to 20-plus pounds, though anything over 10 is considered a big one. Cassidy’s weighed 10.1 pounds (after being bled) and measured just under 27 inches – that’s one serious scup. Because the fish is so uncommon, New York does not have a state record category for jolthead porgies. The last record of a jolthead catch in New York was a 9-pounder off Montauk in 2018.
Jolthead porgies feed on crabs and mollusks, and, unlike our porgies up here, larger adult joltheads tend to be solitary. The name is believed to come from the feeding behavior of these fish as they “jolt” the mollusks from the rocks before eating them.
