Guideline/IA Biggest Fish Contest Winners!
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Hey guys –
All right, the Guideline/IA biggest fish contest is now concluded. Let’s review our entrants:
Simon Chu, with what looks to be about a 9-10 pound brown:
Andrew Bell, with a 9 pound Pacific bonefish:
Andrew Brown, with about a 3lbs. largemouth bass:
http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u195/adb1228/IMG00033.jpg
Michael Exl, with a 34 lb. common carp:
Leonard Keeney, with unquestionably the weirdest entry of all, an approximately 50 lbs. paddlefish!
and Rocky Cox, with a 10 lbs. [unknown] carp:
And the Winners are…
[to be continued while I do the math. :)]
Zach
Ok, here’s what my research has uncovered. This contest is a lot closer than it appears. Let’s start with the weirdest entry:
“The largest American paddlefish on record was caught in Iowa and weighed 198 pounds.”
That makes Leonard’s 50lb. paddlefish about 25% of the world record (but keep in mind that’s not a fly-caught world record).
However, Simon Chu’s roughly 10 lbs. brown trout is also right at 25% of the world record (40 lbs., 4 oz., caught out of the Little Red River in my home state of Arkansas).
Andrew Bell’s 9 lbs. Pacific Bonefish poses an interesting question, because we don’t know the species and Indo-Pacific Bones supposedly get bigger than Atlantic bones (there may just be less pressure, however, leading to larger average *catches*). We do have our friend Morsie to rely on:
“The official world-record bonefish is an 8.61kg specimen caught off Zululand, South Africa way back in 1962.”
I assume that’s an Atlantic specimen. 8.61kg is about 18 pounds. I can’t find any evidence of Indo-Pacific bones being any bigger than that weight, and that figure is given in scientific texts as the max size for albula glossodonta (the Indo-Pacific bonefish) as well. Thus, I am awarding Andrew a whopping 50% of the world record figure!
Next, Andrew Brown’s 3 lbs. largemouth bass is about 15% of the the world record caught in Georgia so many years ago.
Michael Exl’s 34 lbs. common carp (cyprinus carpo) is 40% of the current world-record of 84 pounds (caught in Morocco!)
I don’t know the species on Rocky Cox’s carp either, but it looks like a bighead carp (click for link). The bighead record is coincidentally also 85 lbs., hooked by a bowfisherman in Alabama. Thus, Rocky gets only 11% of the total (but he did catch it on a fly – I can’t find a fly-caught record).
So, without further ado, the winners are:
Andrew Bell with his whopping 9 lb. bonefish and Michael Exl’s mammoth 34lb. carp! I want to give a tip of the hat to the folks who submitted, especially those who threw in such weird species. If anyone wants to provide me with a verifiable fly-caught record that would upset my math in their favor (or if they want to submit their fish as a NEW WORLD RECORD!!!!), please feel free to do so by email and I will come up with a consolation prize. 🙂
This was a lot of fun, guys. Thanks to everyone who participated. Winners, please PM me your preferred mailing addresses.
Zach
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