When it comes to fishing, you shouldn't underestimate 12-year-old Lucy Moore. She's already better than many seasoned anglers, and she has the award to prove it. Moore recently took home Maryland's top prize for fishing. She won the Master Angler Milestone award this past May.
Moore is both the youngest and the only female to win the award since its inception in 2019. The others have all been adults. Moore took home a certificate, aquarium tour, and some new fishing gear.
"I really felt like I did something that was like a really great accomplishment for me," she told CBC. Erik Zlokovitz, recreational fisheries outreach co-ordinator for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, says the award is very difficult to win. It requires catching a total of 10 different tropy sized fish.
In order to win, you have to be handy at catching both freshwater and saltwater fish. You need to know how to catch and release. You'll be going after a mixture of native fish and invasive fish in Maryland.
"I call it the black belt of the Fish Maryland program," Zlokovitz said. "She's a young girl who out-fished a lot of older male anglers that thought they kind of dominated the sport." As such, some in the community are a bit jealous of the 12-year-old.
12-Year-Old Catches Shark
But that 12-year-old is a natural. She's been fishing since she was 6-year-old.
"I definitely do love fishing," she said. "Everything about it." When she becomes adult, she wants to be a marine biologist. Her father, Nick Perez, says that she is a natural.
"She has this knack for just coming across unique things," Perez said. "I've never seen one person catch so many trophy quality fish by sheer happenstance."
"Like half the fish for her Master Angler, she was just goofing around with some little fish — just, you know, slow day, trying to catch something — and next thing you know, she, like, turns around and goes, 'Hey, look what I caught!'" Perez added. "You're like, oh my God, where'd that come from?"
The 12-year-old even caught a shark on her 11th birthday. She ended up reeling in a two-meter-long sand tiger shark in a 30-minute battle.
"I got in the water with it," Lucy said. "That was definitely one really cool and hard fight."
"Somebody's always going to be a hater. It's just the way it is. Some people say, 'Oh, there's no way she did this,'" Perez said. "But so many people know who she is in the community that we have here. Everybody comes to her defence, like, 'No, you don't know this kid. You've never seen her out there. Like, don't assume her dad's doing this. She's doing it all.'"
