Biggest Fish Ever Caught: A Long String Of (Mostly) True Stories - Softcover

Vietze, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0762782579 ISBN 13: 9780762782574

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2013

Synopsis

The Biggest Fish Ever Caught will tell the tales behind the International Game Fishing Association's record-holding fish, including where they were bagged, what lines/lures the anglers used, and other tips and tricks. The dozen stories here are filled with amazing action and intriguing characters. They'll take you to lakes, streams, and oceans around the world and explore catch and release vs blood sport fishing, stocking and bioengineering, conservation – and controversy. All the while revealing the sorts of secrets fishermen don't usually like to share.

About this title

About the Author

Award-winning author Andrew Vietze is a Registered Maine Guide and a seasonal ranger at Baxter State Park. His latest book, Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America's 26th President, won a silver Independent Publisher's Book Award, was a finalist for a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award, spent weeks on the bestseller list (in Maine), and was honored by decree of the Maine State Legislature. He's written several other books, including the forthcoming tale of the harrowing events on Boon Island (Globe Pequot), and his work has appeared in a wide array of publications, among them Time Out New York, Big Sky Journal, AMC Outdoors, Explore, Crawdaddy!, the New York Times' LifeWire, and Weather.com's Forecast Earth. He's the former Managing Editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, has won two International Regional Magazine Awards for history writing, and spends as much time as he can in the woods.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A twenty-six-year-old auto mechanic from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Adam Konrad was fishing the province's famous man-made Lake Diefenbaker one June day when he reeled in an astonishingly large rainbow trout – a 28.3-pound beauty. It was a new provincial record – but not quite as big as the 10-lb-line-class world-record rainbow caught on the same lake two years prior by Duane Farden. That one weighed 30.6 pounds. Not long after, Adam's identical twin, Sean, landed a big one, too. Between the two of them, the Konrad brothers hauled in a stream of giants during the span of three weeks. After the 28 pound fish came a 30 pounder and then the grande dame – these were all female fish – a 33.3 pounder.

The Konrads kept coming back, driving the 85 miles from their homes in Saskatoon to fish “Lake Dif”. And they kept pulling in massive fish, until Adam hooked a 43.6 pound rainbow and beat the world record.

Turns out there was a reason all these fish were so huge. They were escapees from CanGro Fish Farm, an aquaculture operation that raised genetically engineered rainbows in pens at head of  Diefenbaker. CanGro harvest more than 2 million pounds of rainbow meat each year. These were special fish bred for the restaurant market, and they are not like their common cousins. Known as triploids – they have three chromosomes rather than the usual two, which renders them sterile. “They don't reproduce, therefore they can put more energy into their growth,” says Norm Dyck, a fisheries biologist for the Province of Saskatchewan. “That's basically why they can get so big.” Indeed, the fish are famous for eating and eating and eating and growing and growing and growing.

The triploids escaped that fateful night in 2000 when a big piece of ice tore a hole in their containment pen. More than 500,000 of them – Wildwest Steelhead – as the company called them, swam off that evening and began new lives as Diefenbaker gamefish.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0762782579
• ISBN 13: 9780762782574
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168