The King of Lings
August 19, 2007
Robbie Hammond of Discovery Bay, CA poses here with the largest lingcod ever caught on rod and reel.
Hammond caught the beast in the Gulf of Alaska while fishing with Capt. Steve Smith of Capt. Steve’s Fishing Lodge.
The ling tipped the scales to 82 pounds, 6 ounces and beat the previous record by about a pound.
The story of the catch may even be more impressive than the fish itself. Capt. Smith said that Hammond, his dad and a group of friends were fishing the first week of August with him. Early in the morning, they made a stop and everybody dropped the jigs over the side.
They immediately got tied into a triple hook up on heavy fish. Hammond, his dad Allan and one of their buddies, Brent, fought their fish for a half hour. Forty minutes into the battle, Brent’s fish was the first to come to the surface…
It was “just” a 50-pound lingcod.
Kokanee on Steroids
July 28, 2007
Sep “Don’t call me Zep Henderson” Hendrickson,” of Sep’s Pro Fishing just got back from a trip to the Holy Grail of kokanee fishing, Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming. He said that, while the fishing was spectacular, the average size of the kokes was down this year.
Here are a couple “dinks” that Sep’s pal, Shirley Spediacci caught on the trip. The one on the left measured 24 1/4 inches and weighed 5 pounds, 2 ounces. The other shaker was only 23 inches and 4 pounds, 8 ounces.
Not a steelhead…repeat, this is NOT a steelhead!
July 27, 2007
I know, I know, this bruiser looks like a big B.C. steelhead, but it’s not…it’s actually a Chinook with a cool paint job. Nah, just kidding (though the fish is big enough to be a king). If you can believe it, the beast is a massive Kenai River rainbow! If you’ve ever wanted to try for the rainbow of a lifetime on fluff chucking gear, check out the article by Stacy Corbin in the Summer 2007 issue of Fish & Fly Magazine.
Holy Doughballs, Batman!
July 20, 2007
According to the fine folks at Spluch.com, this monster Siamese giant carp weighed 265 friggin’ pounds and was caught in Thailand’s Bung Sam Lan Lake on July 2nd. The beast, and I do mean beast, was taken by a fishing guide named Kik, who works for Fishing Adventures Thailand.
The carp is thought to be the largest of its kind ever taken (duh!). I’m not sure what the fish was caught on, but rumor has it that it was on a doughball the size of a volleyball…
7X tippet and a No. 22 Zebra Midge?
June 27, 2007
Here I am with a big Alaskan ‘bow caught by a client of mine on the Nushagak River while we were backtrolling a “California Watermelon” K-15 Kwikfish on 60-lb. mono leader. So much for cobweb tippets and matching the hatch…
Aliens on light tackle!
June 25, 2007
So there we are, Big Fred and me, guiding a saltwater fishing expedition in Northern California when Big Boy gets the bright idea to hook up a chunk of bait on a light spinning outfit…”just for kicks.”
It doesn’t take long for the bait to get eaten…by an alien.
And let me tell you, when hooked on light gear, the extraterrestrial beast put up quite a scrap! Ron Milam, of Rocklin, CA was the man on the stick for the battle, which raged on for a good 36 straight hours. Well, okay, maybe it was more like 20 minutes, but it took a good week for Ron’s fingers to uncramp and straighten out after the encounter.
The world’s largest rainbow?
June 13, 2007
Move over Bell Island, Alaska, there’s a new home (if all the paper work goes through) of the all-tackle world record rainbow trout: Lake Diefenbaker.
Lake Diefen…what? I know, it’s not exactly a household name — until now — but the lake in Saskatchewan has a reputation for pumping out incredible rainbows like this pending world record caught by Adam Konrad, 26, of Saskatoon.
According to the fine folks at trophytroutguide.com, the mammoth beast weighed 43.6 pounds and was 38.75 inches long with an incredible girth of 34 inches.
Brownzilla and Friends
June 10, 2007
Here’s Brownzilla (he’s the dark 12 pounder on the right) and several of his buddies living in the “trout country club” under Fanny Bridge in the Truckee River at Tahoe City, CA.
Of course, the area is closed to all fishing and the trout live the life of luxury as hordes of tourists throw food to them each day. Most of the trout (the majority are browns but there are some rainbows, too) are in the 5- to 10+ pound range, which is amazing considering all the empty calories they eat — Wonder Bread, Cheetos, french fries, and potato chips are the staples of their diets.
I often wonder how big these dudes would be if people chucked high-protein stuff like salmon roe, minnows and worms at them all summer long…might be big enough to make me think more seriously about doing a little poaching!
Alaskan “Closet Door”
June 9, 2007
Andy Martin, former Fishing & Hunting News editor and current fishing guide with Wild River Guide Service in Alaska, sent in this photo of one of his first charters of the young season.
While not a barn door-sized halibut, this 75-pound “closet door” ‘butt is about as big as you’d ever want to keep — the huge ones are a royal pain to fight & land; they don’t taste all that great and are mostly mature females that are best left alone to spawn.
This nice fish, and several “chickens” in the 20- to 30-pound class fell for a Berkley GULP! squid tipped with salmon belly. The action was off Montague Island, which is a long, 65-mile run out of Seward.
The first part of the run is nice (inside Resurrection Bay) but the rest of the way can be subject to nasty weather and big ground swells because (trust me, I’ve nearly puked there a few times!) it opens right up to the Gulf of Alaska.
It’s often worth the run, however, as the halibut, ling and coho fishing can be out of this world!
Why Canada is cooler than California
June 6, 2007
Prior to his spring trip to Canada’s northwestern coast, Ron “Millman” Milam of Rocklin, CA, had never landed a steelhead over 8 pounds. Now, thanks to this beast (and many others) that he caught on eggs under a float, he’s completely ruined for life…
