9-Year-Old Girl Breaks Maryland's Fishing Record With Fish Bigger Than Her

This is Emma Zajdel, a 9-year-old from Ocean City, who caught a 94.6-pound cobia near Little Gull Shoals about a mile and a half east of Assateague Island on June 30. Her fish shattered the 79-pound state record set in 2014. Per WTOP...

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Emma and her father, Ed, were fishing with friends hoping to catch some bluefish in the area that day when a line went tight.

“At first, we thought it was a shark, and the line was going out,” she said, according to a Department of Natural Resources news release. “I could hear the reel and the drag and I thought I could go over the side.”

After a 20-minute battle, the 9-year-old got the fish on the boat where it went “ballistic,” Ed told the Department of Natural Resources. He said he and a friend “wrestled the fish into the fish box.”

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