Posted on 12/16/2009 4:30:10 AM PST by SJackson
ROCKFORD -- With one world-record fish under his belt, Thomas Healy is not holding his breath for another.
“I have a hard time believing it could happen again tomorrow,” said the Rockford man, 66, who caught a 41-pound, 7-ounce, 43.75-inch brown trout in the Big Manistee River in Manistee County in September.
Healy received notice this week from the Dania Beach, Fla.-based International Game Fish Association that his grab is the largest ever hooked.
The catch eclipses the world record set by Howard Collins, who caught a 40-pound, 4-ounce brown trout in the Little Red River in Arkansas in 1992. It smashed the former state record, held by Casey Richey for his 36-pound, 13-ounce brown trout caught near Frankfort Harbor in 2007.
The retired Owen-Ames-Kimball construction company president said he has returned to the locale about a dozen times since fate wrangled with his Rapala Shad Rap lure and Cabela’s rod and reel.
He had help from 15-year fishing buddy and East Grand Rapids resident Bob Woodhouse and guide Tim Roller of Cadillac-based Ultimate Outfitters when he wrestled with the behemoth near the Bear Creek access point.
“It seems like wherever I go, people either recognize me -- ‘Oh, you’re the guy who caught the fish’ -- or I’m introduced as the guy who caught the fish,” Healy said. “The glory goes to the fish.”
The Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum, of Hayward, Wis., hailed Healy’s fish as a world record in October. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is awaiting DNA test results to determine the strain. Todd Kalish, fisheries supervisor for the Central Lake Michigan unit, said it is likely a seeforellen, wild rose or part of the naturalized population.
The fish currently is wrapped up in Healy’s freezer, awaiting work by a yet-to-be-determined taxidermist in the next couple weeks, he said.
“I wanted to make sure it was going to be a world record,” Healy said.
If you’d like to be on or off this Upper Midwest/outdoors/rural list please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
Thats nothing, you should have seen the one that got away from me last weekend.......
Hmmmmm
I’d vote for cooking over taxidermy.
This is Rockford, Michigan, not Rockford, Illinois.
A classic lure. Fish it fast or slow.
I’d vote catch and release
I had a hotel maid who once stocked the toilet in my room with brown trout while I was attending a business meeting. I haven’t stayed at that particular Chicago hotel since. I don;t think any of them were a world record though.
I’m no expert here, but I believe brown trout were originally imported from Germany and not native to North America.
I suspect that seeforellen and wild rose are stocked fish, as opposed to trout that were spawned from previously stocked (naturalized population) fish. Just a guess. Be glad to told how stupid I am.
Hank
Naw. He’s obviously lived long enough! LOL.
yes, i know just enough restaurant German to say seeforellen means “lake trout”. Your take on naturalized population makes sense - descendents of introduced stocked fish, as opposed to an individual that was itself stocked as a small fry. thanks (and I guess if they were stocked by a government org, the original fish implicitly had H-1B’s, so not illegals.)
Yummy! We used to catch legal sized brown trout, gut them, stuff them with bread stuffing and lemon slices, wrap them in foil and bake on the covered kettle Weber grill over slow coals for half the day. Awesome!
I think the trout he caught would be a little mealy. It’ll make a nice mount, though!
LOL, I thought of that as well!
You too? I took a picture of mine and the negative weighed two pounds. After I pulled it out of the lake, it took five minutes for the hole in the water to fill back up.
Notice in the article that it says he caught it with a Cabela’s rod and reel.
That guy is going to get a small fortune from Cabela’s to put the mount in one of their stores, likely the one in Dundee, Mi.
If he knows what he is doing, he will make hundreds of thousands $$ in ad promotions etc!
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