The world-record muskie weighed 69 pounds 15 ounces—including the sand poured into its belly. The world record smallmouth weighed 11 pounds 15 ounces—after it was stuffed full of lead and engine parts. The world record walleye—never weighed 25 pounds, with or without stuffing.
Shaken by a rash of illegitimate records, public trust is probably at an all-time low. Not only was the world-record muskie a hoax, but several line-class records for muskie have been thrown out as well. The smallmouth taken from Dale Hollow Lake by D.L. Hayes in 1955 actually weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces, according to the testimony of the man who packed three pounds of metal into the fish at the behest of his boss, a publicity-hungry resort owner.
Not surprising then, that the blurry, overexposed photo of a walleye from Tennessee that reportedly weighed 25 pounds on a certified scale has finally been discounted. Al and Ron Lindner doubted the veracity of the record for more than 25 years, and In-Fisherman ran numerous editorials that questioned Mabry Harper’s “record” during that period. Last summer, the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame finally agreed with that assessment and disqualified Harper’s catch.
Ted Dzialo, director of the Hall of Fame, said the decision was made by committee. “I’m sure In-Fisherman had questions about the record,” he said. “In fact, I remember an article you did on the subject. Our board of governors meeting decided to disqualify the record based on measurements of Harper’s hands in relation to the length and depth of the fish. We decided that Al Nelson’s 22-pound 11-ounce walleye (taken from Greer’s Ferry in Arkansas) should be the true world record.”
Why the sudden demise of so many old records? “Hey, things were a little looser in those days,” he laughed. “People weren’t as meticulous about records back then. Harper caught a nice fish, no question. But we feel it couldn’t have weighed 25 pounds.” Estimates of the true weight of Harper’s fish, after close analysis, now rest in the 17- to 19-pound range, according to Dzialo.
Honest records affect all anglers. The new record establishes an attainable goal for trophy walleye hunters, true. But records are important for many other reasons. World-record fish give us at least an approximate sense of the maximum size a species can attain. State and provincial records measure the potential a region has for producing fish of world-class status. Line-class records define our limitations and challenge us to redefine them.
Information about bodies of water, presentation, time of year, and other data that surrounds each record provides a running history of how we fish, what methods take the biggest fish, and much, much more. Records place everything relative to fishing in proper perspective. Unless the record is a hoax.
When a wildlife officer came to inspect Harper’s walleye, all that remained was the head and a question. Could a walleye actually weigh 25 pounds? Apparently not. We know that walleyes in the 20-pound class were caught in that region during the early 1960s. They were those “firsts” we often talk about—in this case, the first generations of walleyes reaching old age in those reservoirs. But no verified catches of a walleye over 23 pounds have ever occurred anywhere in North America, before or since, in commercial nets or in game-and-fish netting surveys. Nor has one washed up on a beach that might have approached the mythical 25 pounds.
