— Ernest Hemingway
When I wrote "Stories Behind Record Fish" some years back it became obvious that a great many records were bogus. On informant noted that "the scale they weighted the world record muskie on was popular with parents because most newborns would weigh in at 27 pounds." This record went when they did some photo imaging research.
The wife of the holder of the smallmouth record told me that she had caught the fish but her husband had grabbed the rod when he saw the size of the fish. This record is out because the weight was apparently misplaced. Then, of course, there was the black bass caught in California the had a 2 ½ pound diver's weight inside. That is apparently still open for argument.
No doubt about this record. It's the most impressive blue marlin. While the current all-tackle record taken on 130-pound test weighed in at 1,376, the most astonishing record in saltwater may be Kelley Everette's 1,103 pound catch, which he managed on line 100 pounds lighter. A fish that's 37 times the line test used to catch it is astonishing!
Dubious records are not always American either. There is a skeleton of a "350-pound" pike in a German cathedral apparently assembled from a whole school of vagrant pike vertebrae. My favorite record is the "infamous Ompax spatuloides from Australia that some Queensland comics assembled from the bill of a platypus, the head of a lungfish, the body of a mullet and the tail of an ell. I am told the rather stuffy director of the Brisbane Museum who fell for this hoax never lived it down.
Granted, some of the old saltwater records were rather suspect before the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) took things over. The organization, it should be noted, got its start when a group of more upscale anglers from the famous Catalina Tuna Club — 100 years old this year — got together to do something about the writer of purple prose westerns, Zane Gray. Gray, like Papa Hemingway who tommy gunned fish at times in his Cuban days, did not always play the game in the accepted manner. So the IGFA rules are now very, very, very specific. If you plan to set your own records, check out www.igfa.com and some of the record stories in www.finefishing.com.
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