Longest time to land a fish?

[whitetailz]

What fun.


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[easy45]

You must be a pretty big ole boy to hold that one up with only one hand :tu:

That's a lot of catfish there!
Did you release or eat that one?

. . . . . weighed 100 pounds on the dot.

To answer your question, I'm guilty of not keeping good "timing" records,
but doubt I've ever fought any fish more than 10 to 15 minutes.
Have taken over 5 to 10 minutes to land a good many,
and had a few go around 5 to 10 minutes before breaking the line or finding a way off.

A couple great memories:

1) Back in 1983 I hooked a 4-lb smallmouth while floating the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.
I was using 2-lb test mono and a 1/8 oz crawfish color Roostertail.
The river was pretty high & swift.
Pretty sure I went nearly a mile between hooking & landing, and that fight was about 15 minutes.

Back then, I typically released most my catch, but would often keep the largest one, releasing lots of smaller ones. We ate that 4-lb smallmouth, and it was quite the feast at the time. Kinda do the catch & release backwards from that now today, sometimes keeping a couple small ones to eat, releasing the bigger ones. Different times back in the early 80's, as for most fishermen, there was more keeping than releasing.

2) Although was again using only 2-lb line on an ultralight, hooked into a Big Brown on the White River. Even though we chased the fish trying to keep him from stripping off too much line, he stripped it all off, "ping". That fight lasted maybe 7 minutes. I don't know just how big, but he was supposedly seen by the guide who directed my cast, and sure did hook the fish he saw. Guide thought at least a 10-lb plus Brown. To this day, I've still never caught a Brown or any other trout (or Big Brown Fish) that big.

Big Brown = Big Brown Trout
Big Brown Fish = Big Smallmouth

He was actually hanging on a deer hanging set-up. We actually ate him, I typically don't keep any larger fish but the guy I was with wanted him for a fish fry. It tasted just as good as the smaller ones, just had to do a lot of trimming on it.


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[scn]

90# tarpon on my 11 wt fly rod at 27 min. The first 10 minutes were fun and exciting. The next 15 were just a test of wills. After the release, they handed me a bottle of gatoraid to re-hydrate, and I didn't even have the strength to open the bottle.

Worth every minute of the battle!