The Biggest Fish Ever Caught
Since the beginning of time man has enjoyed fishing and competing for the honor of catching the biggest fish. This was the beginning of fishing games. Today there are many different records kept for large fish. In the United States, each state keeps a record of the largest fish of each species caught in that state. There are also fishing contests that each keeps records of the largest fish that won the contest. In order to try and have a central record keeping and a standard to which everyone can compete the International Game Fish Association began keeping international saltwater fish records many years ago. Today they maintain the records for almost all fish, both freshwater and saltwater.
In the saltwater records the biggest fish ever caught was a whale shark. Whale sharks are known to be over 40 feet long and weight 15 metric tons. But the whale shark is almost always caught in a net and not by tackle so it does not count in the records.
The Great White Shark was once a great game fish. There were several Great Whites caught on tackle that exceeded 2000 pounds. In 1952 off the coast of Australia a Great White weighting 2071 pounds was caught. He is the winner of all shark fishing games.
Blue Marlin is another big saltwater fish. The record from Konce, Hawaii is 1656 pounds. This isn’t the current world record. The records have been getting larger almost every year. In 1966 the world record was only 1100 pounds.
In freshwater the largest fish caught was a Giant Mekong Catfish in Thailand. It was 9 feet long, and weighed over 600 pounds. There were no scales in the area to make an accurate weight.
The world record King Salmon is 97 ¼ pounds caught in 1986 from Alaska’s Koni River. This was a big fish but nothing like a White Sturgeon. In 1956 a White Sturgeon was caught in Idaho’s Snake River that weighed 360 pounds. But in the Columbia River a 1285 pound White Sturgeon was caught.