Quinte Fishing

Funny thing about fishing......

There is an exponential increase in difficulty to catching progressively larger fish.

These days, twelve-pounders are "ordinary" with perhaps a hundred caught [and hopefully released, unless you like consuming contaminants] in Quinte this fall. Fifteen-pounders are showing up with great regularity this year, too, though a few years ago they were hard to come by.

No doubt about it, though - eighteen-pounders are amazingly rare, and a True Trophy.

Now, not to rain on your parade, mate, cuz it's a beautiful fish, but you might need to calibrate your scale! This can you do against a known weight in this range - try some bags of sugar, or some barbells from the Weight Room. In fact, you might consider trying some dumbbells.....

Don't assume digital scales are any more accurate than spring scales - they may be more precise, but there IS a difference. Digital scales should be calibrated, too.

At any rate, here is a fifteen-and-a-quarter pounder weighed on a calibrated spring scale, so you can compare the photos. I am 90% confident that this fish is no less than 15 lbs, and no more than 15.5 lbs. Note that photos can be deceiving! Fishermen also tend to lie a lot! This could just be a "sour grapes" post of jealousy from a guy whose biggest fish he was certain he's caught was 13 1/4 pounds, though he might have released larger in the heat of the moment!



Now, my dad is only 5' 6", so his smaller hands make the fish look a bit bigger than perhaps if some Lard-Ass in a Mustang [or Buoy-O-Buoy] Suit were to hold it. However you can tell by the angle of his arms that the fish is tight against his body. It would look bigger if you held it closer to the camera according to the inverse-square rule. So compare the hand size, the head size, and the shoulders size of my dad. On the fish, look at the dorsal fin, and especially the big gut hanging down!

Interestingly, a few years ago, the World Record Musky was stripped from its previous holder, and awarded to Ken O'Brien who caught a verified 65-pounder out of Blackstone Harbour in the Moon River Basin in 1975 I believe. A "Deathbed Confession" from a friend of the purported World Record Holder, and witness to the alleged catch, said that they lied. Their 69.9 lb musky from the St. Lawrence River in the 60's was not really that big! "Fish Photo Experts" used similar techniques described above to determine that not only was the fish not 70 pounds, but probably "just" in the low 50's.

There are two ways you can find out how much your fish really weighed:

1. Has anyone here ever caught and weighed a 33.5" x 19" fish? If so, how much did it weigh?

2. Go calibrate your scale, and tell us what you find!

Still, helluva fish, dude. And congrats, eh?