Wherever anglers gather, there is likely to be talk about the extreme aspects of fishing. Someone will mention the biggest this or most expensive that,
and suddenly the place is abuzz with discussion. Those with conflicting
opinions may engage in light-hearted arguments, bets will probably be
made, and, sooner or later, someone will access the Internet from their
smartphone to settle the dispute.
To motivate such lively discourses, I present the following tidbits
about fish and fishing that are sure to nurture your knowledge of our
favorite sport and allow you to amaze your fishing friends with the
amount of trivia that clogs your brain. These fascinating facts may also
provide some new benchmarks the hardier among you can try to achieve.
Biggest Record Fish
So you think that marlin you had mounted for the wall was big, huh?
Well, it probably was for its species, but chances are good it wasn’t a
third the size of the heaviest fish in the record books.
On April 21, 1959, Alfred Dean of Irymple, Victoria caught a
2,664-pound great white shark off the coast of his native Australia.
Amazingly, he subdued this monster—the heaviest record fish ever listed
by the International Game Fish Association—in only 50 minutes on
130-pound line. Dean also caught great whites weighing 2,333 and 2,536
pounds.
A replica of Dean’s biggest catch can be seen at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Grapevine, Texas.
Biggest Fish Ever Hooked and Landed
Another giant catch was described in Fishes and Fishing in Louisiana
by James Gowanloch. In 1933, Captain Jay Gould of Hollywood, Florida
captured a manta ray that measured 19 feet, 9 inches from wing-tip to
wing-tip. The ray was hooked on a large shark hook on 1,200 feet of
1/2-inch rope, and when it had been subdued and towed back to Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida, the city’s 20-ton crane had to be used to lift the
fish from the water, after the chain hoists on three smaller cranes were
stripped while trying to bring it up. The manta ray’s weight was
estimated at 5,500 pounds.
Oldest Fishing Record
The 22-pound, 4-ounce world-record largemouth bass caught by George
Perry in Georgia’s Montgomery Lake was unmatched from June 2, 1932 until
Manabu Kurita caught an equally big largemouth on July 2, 2009 in
Japan’s Lake Biwa. That’s a long-standing record by anyone’s measure.
But one fish record has stood almost twice as long and remains
unbroken—a 4-pound, 3-ounce IGFA all-tackle record yellow perch caught
in New Jersey by Dr. C.C. Abbot in May 1865, 150 years ago!
Biggest Bass Ever Caught and Released Twice
A largemouth bass nicknamed Dottie, perhaps the largest ever
recorded, was caught at least twice by anglers fishing 72-acre Dixon
Lake near Escondido, California. (The fish was recognizable because of a
unique black mark on the underside of the right gill plate.) When Jed
Dickerson caught it in 2003, it weighed an astounding 21 pounds. He
released the fish healthy and alive. When Dickerson’s friend Mac Weakley
caught it again in 2006, it weighed 25 pounds, 1 ounce on a hand-held
digital scale, making it a potential new world record. Weakley decided
to release the bass, however, because he had unintentionally foul-hooked
it. The bucketmouth turned up dead in the lake two years later, never
having been caught again.
Fastest Fish
It’s difficult to determine how fast some fish can swim, but some
anglers at Florida’s Long Key Fishing Camp came up with a simple method
for accurately measuring a fish’s swimming speed. A fish is hooked. It
makes a run. You measure how much line the fish took off the spool in a
certain number of seconds, and you can calculate the fish’s speed. The
fastest fish in these speed trials, perhaps the fastest fish in the
world, was a sailfish that took out 300 feet of line in three seconds, a
velocity of 68 mph. That’s zero to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds!
Fastest-traveling Fish
A tagged great white shark became the quickest recorded oceanic
traveler after it swam from South Africa to Australia and back in under a
year. The female shark was tagged with a data transmitter off South
Africa in November 2003. The unit detached automatically and was
recovered off western Australia four months later, but that wasn’t the
end of the story. In August 2004, five months after the transmitter
bobbed to the surface, project research scientists spotted the
shark—identifiable by a pattern of notches in its dorsal fin—back in its
old haunt off South Africa. It had completed a round trip of some
12,500 miles in just nine months.
Biggest Fly Rod and Reel
On June 12, 1999, Tiney Mitchell of Port Isabel, Texas, finished
constructing the world’s largest fly fishing rod and reel. The rod is a
whopping 71 feet, 4.5 inches long. The reel measures 4 feet in diameter
and 10 inches in width. You can see it at the end of Maxan Street in
Port Isabel.
Oldest Fish
For many years, the oldest fish on record was female European eel
named Putte. She was kept in an aquarium all her adult life, and when
she died at Hälsingborg Museum, Sweden in 1948, that slimy ol’ gal was
reported to be 88 years old.
That record is old news, though. A 32-inch-long rougheye rockfish
caught in Alaska was determined by scientists to be an amazing 205 years
old. Biologists used growth rings in the fish’s ear bone to estimate
the age of the fish that started life 50 years before the Civil War!
Researchers are studying the genetic code of rockfish, but it’s unclear
for now why the rougheye, which matures and reproduces late in life,
lives so long.
Priciest Lure Ever Made
If you’re like me, you find it pretty upsetting when you snag a $5 or
$10 fishing lure and lose it. But a loss like that is nothing compared
to the chance one would take fishing with the Million Dollar Lure from
MacDaddy Fishing Lures. This 12-inch trolling lure, designed to catch
marlin, was crafted with just over 3 pounds of glimmering gold and
platinum, and encrusted with 100 carats of diamonds and rubies (4,753
stones to be exact). Cost? Just as the name says—a cool $1 million.
According to Sport Fishing magazine, the lure’s owner
insured it through Lloyd’s of London and actually trolled it behind a
boat inside the bay at Cabo San Lucas using 130-pound-test mono and a
500-pound steel leader. Fortunately for him, perhaps, the sparkly bait
didn’t draw any strikes.
Most Consecutive Casts
So you thought you made a lot of casts during the last tournament you
fished, huh? Check this out. In July 1999, Brent Olgers of Macon,
Georgia established a world record for the longest period of consecutive
casting. Using a Zebco 33 Classic reel, Olgers cast 6,501 times in just
over 24 hours, averaging 270 casts per hour. Each cast had to be at
least 45 feet in length. Amazing!
