FishwithJD

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Good to see you again, Chinook #14!

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Kyle with our ol' pal No. 14


As most of you probably know, I’ve been involved with a multi-agency salmon project in which I’ve been hired to capture (with rod & reel…I know, cry me a river!) Chinook salmon and then outfit them with acoustic tags so their progress upstream can be monitored and tracked.

Well, we tagged 60ish spring-run kings in May and June and now we’re onto fall-run. While fishing for falls the other day, I encountered an old friend, Chinook 14. I hooked and landed him back on May 25 on sulfite-cured eggs and then on Aug. 31 he decided to sample a sardine-wrapped FlatFish. Proof positive that catch & release works.

Take a closer look of these two pics of him with my crew member Kyle holding — it’s not often that you get to see the same salmon at various life stages. Notice how many more spots he’s developed since he was a freshie. Overall, he looks pretty good considering he’s been hanging around for three months. Now, Fourteen…get upriver and make some babies!

The Kid’s First Striper

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Took the kid out the other night for a quickie 1-hour (that’s about all a 4-year-old can handle) fishing mission on the river to dunk some sardines. It was a beautifully cool August evening, just dad and the monkey. On the first cast, his little rod doubles over and the fight is on! I have to hold the back of his lifejacket as the scrappy striper is determined to yank the kid over the side. It all looks like a scene from one of those long range tuna boats…rod pinned to the rail and the angler grunting as he struggles to lift the fish from the depths.

A moment or two later, I heaved the 15 incher, Coop’s first-ever striper, aboard. Judging by that grin, it might as well been 50 pounds! You should have seen my smile…

The new All Tackle World Record Brown Trout??

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(IGFA Photo)

On July 16, less than a year after Michigan’s Tom Healy set a new All Tackle World Record for brown trout with a 41 pound, 7 ouncer, Roger Hellen of Franksville, WI banged a monster brown that was larger than the current record — by an ounce (41 pounds, 8 ounces). Hellen hooked the beast while trolling a Fishlander spoon in Lake Michigan off the Wisconsin coast.

Now, here’s where things get a little dicey: Though Hellen’s fish is one ounce heavier than the current all-tackle record, according to IGFA World Record requirements, to replace a record fish weighing 25 pounds or more, the replacement must weigh at least one half of 1 percent more than the existing record. Bottom-line, Healy and Hellen might be sharing an IGFA World Record tie for their two fish. As a baseball guy, I’m not a big fan of ties, but what can you do here?

I have no idea how Hellen’s fish was handled, but if it were thrown on the bottom of the boat and allowed to dry out rather than being put immediately on ice, (again pure speculation on my part…though the fish in the pic looks pretty leathery), it would have lost a significant amount of weight…enough, probably, to make the difference.Click here to read more…

River Monster: The new world record Blue Catfish

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The new record blue cat: If that doesn't stop ya from wanting to go noodlin', I don't know what will! (Photo:IGFA)


Though it looks like something from a B horror flick that crawls out of the sewer to eat unsuspecting college co-eds, this repulsive beast is actually a pending IGFA All Tackle World Record blue catfish.

Greg Bernal of Florissant, MO nabbed this 130-pound giant blue cat (think about that one for a minute…130 pounds of catfish) while fishing on the Missouri River, out of North County, MO with an Asian carp for bait. The battle lasted 20 minutes and the fish bested the previous world record for the species by 6 pounds. The old mark for blue cats was a 124 pounder caught five years ago by Timothy Pruitt from the Mississippi River near Alton, Ill.

Guess it’s catfish dinner tonight, honey!

For more world record info, check out IGFA.org