Tag: World Record Fish

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Freshwater Fishing Tales and Lies

It’s common knowledge that fisherman, especially freshwater fishermen tend to stretch the truth a bit. Those less educated in the ways of fishing might even call it a lie.

You know that right? Well apparently it’s so very well known that the IGFA has to resort to polygraph testing when certifying a fish as a record catch! Oh the IGFA is the “International Game Fish Association” which is tasked with the job of keeping records for fish caught. When a possible new world record fish is caught, they go about certifying the catch and making sure all appropriate rules were followed when the catch was made.

If you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, you probably didn’t hear that a potential world record largemouth bass was caught in Japan this past year. (I also wrote another post about it here: new-world-record-largemouth-bass.)

Anyway, back to the IGFA. It turns out that since it’s been 77 years that the world record largemouth was caught, they wanted to be very careful about certifying the latest record catch. Now the fish that was caught was only 2 ounces bigger than the previous world record, and as such, it does not qualify as a new world record … but it does qualify as a tie for the world record under IGFA rules. That is, once it gets certified.

Good news is that the catch a was certified. But you should read this article in the “Shreveport Times” to see what the fisherman went through to get it certified!

A Fish For The Ages

The guy had to take a polygraph for goodness sake! Now that’s taking your certification process VERY seriously!

So how about we all start a new trend and try telling the truth when it comes to our fish stories? That way, maybe we won’t need to take polygraph tests when we catch a new world record fish! Can we make it work? Or is it just too much to ask of us?

OK – OK. So we like exagerating a bit. Don’t ask too much of us!

Here’s to hoping you all catch the fish of your dreams this year!

Happy New Year and I’ll catch you later!

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Freshwater Fishing – Texas Catfish or Chameleon?

There’s so much information to be found on the Internet!

I was reading about a gentleman who caught a rather large catfish in Texas last month. How large – the catfish weighed 45 pounds, measured 41 inches long, had 28 inches in girth and was 9½ inches across its head. Oh! … And it was caught on 6 lb test line!

Now I know that certainly isn’t a world record fish, but you’ve got to give props to the guy for landing such a large fish on such light gear! Unfortunately there was no picture of the fish in the article I was reading. Perhaps that’s because he was too embarrassed to show the pink spinning reel he was using! (He claimed it was his wife’s!) lol

But I digress … The reel (pun intended) reason for the topic of this post is the other catfish caught down in Texas. The one that had the coloring which was similar to a killer whale! The size of the fish was not given, but the coloring was. The catfish was “a blue catfish that was colored in a vivid black and white pattern, much like a killer whale.” Very unique coloring for sure!

Turns out that this wasn’t the first catfish caught in that lake that had this coloring. There were 3 – 4 other fish caught in the last 4 decades that exhibited this coloring pattern. Another fellow, who is the curator of aquaria for the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, said that he had a “black and white blue catfish on display in that facility that eventually reverted to a normal bluish gray color. The same thing happened to a killer whale-colored blue cat in Cabela’s Fort Worth store, where curator Tim Huebner said it took about 18 months for the fish to morph into a traditional color.”

Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State stated that the condition is called partial albinism and could result from an injury or stress caused by environmental conditions. Who said that the chameleon is the only animal to change its color?

So I was wondering what it was that was in that lake in Texas that was causing such stressed out catfish? Perhaps the fish there can read and all the bad news going around is stressing out those poor cats! Hah – guess we’ll never know!

If you’d like to read the article, you can find it here:

Crazy Catfish

Have a good day and I’ll catch you later!

Editor’s Note: Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State was kind enough to send a picture of the uniquely colored catfish for everyone to view. He said the picture was sent to him from Texas Parks and Wildlife fish biologist – Bruce Hysmith (the actual photographer is unknown). So here’s the picture and many thanks to Professor Bonner!

Texas Killer Whale Catfish
Killer Whale Catfish

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