Take a peak into the history of some of my favorite rods!!
Will these World Record Fish ever be broken?
There are a bunch of world record fish that likely will never be broken.
In some cases records will remain safe due to new regulations. Take for example, Joey “Sturgeon King” Pallotta’s 468-pound white sturgeon that he caught out of Benicia, CA back in July of 1983. Since then, fishing regulations governing sturgeon up and down the West Coast include maximum size limits to ensure the big spawner females don’t get taken out of the gene pool.
In other cases, habitat degradation, development, pollution and over-harvest have all but wiped out the ability of some species to reach record class sizes anymore.
From monster great white sharks to Tuna the size of small cars and brook trout as long as your leg, here’s Field & Stream’s list of 15 (most likely) Unbreakable World Records.
The Ones that Got Away!
Fish on, fish gone…
They haunt your dreams and gnaw at your soul. They keep you awake in the wee hours and make your chest hurt when you think too much about them. You’ll remember them – like it was yesterday – as long as you live.
I am, of course, talking about the ones that got away.
It sounds kinda crazy, but it’s those encounters with massive fish that spat the hook or busted off that you think about even more than the ones you landed. I guess you could say that it is “better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” but I’m not totally sure. Some of ‘em still hurt really, really badly…
The say misery loves company, so here are a few stories to make you feel not so alone in your grieving of the ones that got away…
A monster lurks
The one that still sticks in my craw took place a couple years ago on my home stream, the American River near Sacramento. It was a couple days before Christmas and buddy Tim Reilly and I got a kitchen pass from holiday chores, so we decided to wet a line for steelies.
With only a couple hours to spare, we left the boat at home and opted instead for wading a couple productive riffles where my clients had been catching good numbers of small fall-run steelhead in the 3- to 5-pound class on recent guide trips. Armed with light spinning gear, slinkies and small egg clusters, we worked the upper spot without incident and then decided to move downstream.
Click here to read more…
The (not so) Secret Sturgeon Bait
Kinda like using crawdad tail meat on your sardine-wrapped Kwikfish is a non-secret “secret” these days, the use of salmon roe for sturgeon is also one of those “things that nobody really talks about but everyone kinda knows about.
Still, it is worth mentioning that diamondbacks do seem to really have a taste for the orange caviar in certain situations. Capt. Jay Lopes of Right Hook Sportfishing in San Francisco Bay tells you what you need to know…Click here to read more…
NOAA Fisheries: “Change CA water pumping ops”
Well, the Feds finally understand what we’ve all been saying for a looong time: The way the Northern California’s water is managed is a bad deal for fish like salmon, steelhead, sturgeon…and even, as it turns out, southern killer whales.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its final biological opinion that finds (surprise, surprise!) the water pumping operations in the Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of several threatened and endangered species under the jurisdiction of NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
Federal biologists and hydrologists concluded that current water pumping operations in the Federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project should be changed to ensure survival of winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, the southern population of North American green sturgeon and Southern Resident killer whales, which rely on Chinook salmon runs for food.Click here to read more…