Real big fish

March 23, 2006 12:27 PM

George Perry, a poor 19 year old farmer, set the world all-tackle record for large mouth bass in 1932, when he caught a 22 pound, 4 ounce bass in Montgomery Lake, Georgia. It's a good story -- he was a poor farmer, he and his buddy only had one lure, it was during the Depression, and the fish was not caught for sport but for food. Furthermore, it was only weighed as an afterthought, after he was told that Field and Stream had a big bass contest that paid a $75 prize. Amazingly, that record has stood for over 73 years. In the interim, sport fishing for bass has become widely popular around the world, a multi-billion dollar market served by its own retail establishments, tournament tour, TV shows, corporate sponsorships, and legions of amateur fisher-men and -women, all trying to catch a bass bigger than the one George Perry caught back in 1932.

On Monday, after years of trying, a trio of San Diego fisherman hooked a 25 pound, 1 ounce fish that may have broken that record. (Includes picture of obscenely huge large mouth bass.) And they let it go, passing up potentially millions of dollars in endorsements. And their decision to release the fish and not pursue the record is the real story here.
posted by mosk (24 comments total)

Man, that is a fat fucking Bass. It looks like a regular fish inflated like a balloon.
posted by delmoi at 1:19 PM on March 23, 2006

Meh, you guys shoulda seen the one I caught...
posted by NationalKato at 1:20 PM on March 23, 2006

Taint no mekong fish, that's for sure.
posted by shoepal at 1:25 PM on March 23, 2006

Weakley's monster bass, caught on a Bob Sangster handmade white rattlesnake jig (on 15-pound P-Line monofilament) from Angler's Arsenal, was weighed on a Berkley BogaGrip, a hand-held scale, but no measurements were taken of the biggest bucketmouth landed in the history of black bass fishing.

Argle-gargle-google-goop.

Anyway, that fish looks seriously messed-up; like it's hosting a gigantic tumor or something. I've never seen a fish with a beer-gut, pufferfish notwithstanding.
posted by Gator at 1:25 PM on March 23, 2006

I caught a fish one time that was so big the picture weighed 7 lbs.
posted by wsg at 1:27 PM on March 23, 2006

It's full of eggs. Or, RTFA.
posted by billysumday at 1:28 PM on March 23, 2006

Gator, she's preggers, she's gonna pop, she's full of little baby bass eggs.
They guy snagged her while she was guarding her nest.
posted by Floydd at 1:30 PM on March 23, 2006

I bet that bit of water's going to be awfully full of anglers now.
posted by raedyn at 1:56 PM on March 23, 2006

Thank you Floydd. At the time I was composing my comment, TFA consisted of broken links, so I had manually pasted the first one into my address bar, and there was no mention of eggery in that, er, FA.
posted by Gator at 1:57 PM on March 23, 2006

The post makes it sound like they didn't submit it for a noble reason. The article makes it sound like they didn't submit it because it wasn't caught legally and so wouldn't have been given the official record anyway.
posted by spock at 2:40 PM on March 23, 2006

What is foul hooking?
posted by Mitheral at 2:45 PM on March 23, 2006

What is foul hooking?

In the butthole...
posted by BobFrapples at 2:56 PM on March 23, 2006

foul hooking: Accidentally hooking a fish in any part of its body other than the mouth.
posted by mullacc at 3:58 PM on March 23, 2006

big fish.
posted by crunchland at 4:04 PM on March 23, 2006

I spend most of the summer cruising my river in the kayak trying to catch something about a tenth of the size of this fish...

This guy should just stop fishing and die now, 'cuz it is never gonna get better than this...

If you're not a bass fisherman, you'll never understand this....
posted by HuronBob at 4:46 PM on March 23, 2006

And if you're not a bass fisherman, read "Double Whammy" by Carl Hiaasen. It's hilarious and will help you understand fish fever.
posted by plinth at 5:00 PM on March 23, 2006

The post makes it sound like they didn't submit it for a noble reason. The article makes it sound like they didn't submit it because it wasn't caught legally and so wouldn't have been given the official record anyway.

Well, I guess it's a bit of both. As the OP, I though what they did was noble, or at least classy. From what I've read previously, a fish has to be "taken", that is, actually killed, to be a valid submission for a world record. The rules may have changed recently, but my understanding is that fish that were caught and released were not considered eligible for WR status. So these guys could have just killed the fish and/or lied about how they hooked it, which many people would be tempted to do, given the amount of money they could potentially receive in endorsements. They didn't -- they were honest about how they hooked it, and it sounds like they treated the fish well (apart from the hook-in-the-body thing). I mean, these men were fishing -- the activity isn't known for making people honest.
posted by mosk at 5:25 PM on March 23, 2006

> I mean, these men were fishing -- the activity isn't known for making people honest.


Man, I wanna tell ya how long I went without telling a fish story. (Stretches arms out wide, wider, --uunh--, widest) I went this long. It's true!
posted by jfuller at 5:37 PM on March 23, 2006

I never really did get the whole fishing thing (either you don't catch anything, or you prove you're smarter than a fish), but — as plinth says — I can't believe there's ever been a more enjoyable fishing book than Double Whammy. I loved it.
posted by LeLiLo at 6:42 PM on March 23, 2006

I third the Double Whammy recommendation. Great stuff.
posted by graventy at 6:50 PM on March 23, 2006

I didn't enjoy Double Whammy, or that other forgettable Hiassen book I read. Too contrived.
posted by wsg at 12:58 AM on March 24, 2006

Can you imagine what it is like out on that lake today? Hundreds of high powered bass-boatin' bait-crankin' Red-Man-spittin' Bass Masters on the prowl for the One That Got Away...

That bass probably has more high-tech hardware chasing him down at this minute than Osama Bin Laden.

Really, much respect that the guy returned it to the water rather than risk killing it for dubious recognition (Foul-Hooked Record Bass....) . I'd buy a used car from him.
posted by zaelic at 2:20 AM on March 24, 2006

I don't know enough about the rules that govern bass fishing, but the inference is that the fish was caught during the spawning season which in my mind seems a tad unethical.

I know that in Australia when fishing for trout there are restrictions on catching fish during the spawning season.

I'm happy to stand corrected if it is within the rules and it wasn't the spawning season....still if they get the mother of all trophy bass I'd prefer if it was done outside the spawning season.
posted by pjgirl at 3:20 AM on March 24, 2006

Let me just clarify, the article speaks of the debate on whether or not it is ethical to dangle a hook triggered with irritants near a hormonally charged fish in hopes that it will get angry and bat it away as opposed to the purely ethical means like tricking them into eating a lure covered in hunger inducing hormones or containing flashers or rattles that trigger instinctual feeding reactions, hooking a smaller animal and dangling it near the fish or just plain stabbing it with a gaff.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:06 AM on March 24, 2006