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Texas Bride Reels In 50-Pound Black Drum on Her Wedding Night

A Texas bride caught a huge black drum fish just hours after getting married in the city of Port Aransas. Eliot Granville, 34, of San Antonio, Texas, reeled in the massive catch after the reception for her wedding to husband Earnie died down late in the evening.

“It was perfect,” Eliot Granville told Fox News Digital about her wedding, which her own mother officiated. “We had a great day.”

As guests finally finished going home, Eliot decided she wanted to go fishing around 10 p.m. She even wore her white reception dress to the pier for her late night excursion.

“It was kind of just like a last-minute thing that we decided to do,” Granville said of the little adventure.

Apparently the fish nipped at her line for 45 minutes but kept getting away with her bait. Eventually, she felt the tug on her line and started yanking. The size of the catch made her wonder what was caught on the other end.

“I set the hook, and then I started reeling it in,” Granville said. “At first I thought that maybe I was stuck on something on the bottom because the fish was so large — I’ve never caught a fish that large. And then I realized that there was actually a fish on there,” she added. 

She also said her line was tested for fish much smaller, so she had to be careful about reeling it in.

About 15 minutes later, the new bride got the black drum to the pier and netted it

“Everybody’s adrenaline was going,” Granville said, adding that some other fishermen helped with the catch, too. “We were so excited. We got him up there and I was shocked at how big he was.”

The group estimates that the black drum weighed about 50 pounds.

“That’s definitely the biggest fish that I’ve ever caught,” Granville said. “It was really exciting. It was a lot of fun.”

Eliot and her husband decided to snap a few pics of the fish and then release it back into the water. The bride said the fish represented something extra special on her special day. The photos can be seen here.

“My sister and all my friends, they were like, ‘It’s a gift from your dad,’” Granville said of her father, who died in August. “He loved fishing.”

“We were extremely close,” she added. “He was my best friend. So my sister was like, ‘It’s your dad watching over you.’ I thought that was really sweet.”

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, the black drum is a chunky, high-backed fish with many barbels or whiskers under the lower jaw.

“This fish is a member of the croaker family and is related to the Atlantic croaker, red drum, and spotted seatrout,” the TPW website reads. “A characteristic of this family of fish is the ability to produce croaking or drumming sounds with the air bladder. This ability is most developed in the black drum. Anglers can sometimes hear sounds from schools passing near their boats.