When a Moment of Fame Hits a Snag

Maybe you saw the news report about a North Dakota angler's record-breaking catch. Tom Volk was fishing the Heart River on April 21, 2019, when he caught a massive 16-pound 9-ounce walleye.

Initially, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department posted an item on their Facebook page, congratulating the fisherman for "besting the old record by three-quarters of a pound." However, witnesses then came forward about how the catch was made, and an investigation ensued. The department found sufficient evidence to disqualify Volk's catch. They concluded the fish was foul-hooked and therefore could not be recognized as a state record.

The angler denied that his catch was foul-hooked, but that didn't sway the Game and Fish Department officials.

A rule has foiled more than one angler's moment of fame. For example, back in March 2012, a man named Paul Crowder pulled a 16-pound 5-ounce record largemouth from Lake Dunn in Arkansas. It was a bigger fish by one ounce, but a problem soon surfaced. In the course of verifying the new record, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission discovered Crowder's fishing license had been purchased hours after he'd claimed to have caught the fish. This fact immediately made the catch illegal.

Furthermore, officials hit Crowder with charges for fishing without a license. While he told authorities he didn't set out to fish without a license intentionally, that didn't matter in the eyes of the law, nor the record books.

There's also the case of Rob Scott, who was ice fishing with a tip-up when he caught a massive 52-pound 3-ounce lake trout. This fish would have shattered the word record for a tip-up-caught trout by almost 20 pounds, but just like the Crowder bass, there was a legality problem.

First, rules are tricky on Lac la Croix, where Scott caught the fish...mostly because the lake straddles the line between Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. On the Canadian side, one is limited to one lake trout per day. On the Minnesota side, anglers are allowed two.

In this case, Scott was fishing on the Canadian side, and before he caught the record fish, an Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources officer had checked his fishing license. That same officer noted Scott already had his limit with a 4-pound trout he had laying on the ice. It wasn't illegal for him to keep fishing, but it definitely was illegal to keep the massive trout he caught later.

When the officer learned of the record catch, Scott's story started falling apart. He confessed to giving the 4-pound trout to another angler to make his catch appear legit. However, the record fish was confiscated, and he was denied world-record status. Scott later pleaded guilty to the crime and paid $475 in fines and court costs.

The sad thing is, had Scott been just 100 feet away, across the Minnesota line, the catch would have been perfectly legal.

There's also the case of a world-record muskie catch back in 1969. Art Lawton caught this reportedly 69-pound 15-ounce toothy monster on the St. Lawrence River in New York. At the time, Field and Stream magazine kept the records for freshwater fishing, and they required a lot less proof than what is required now. Basically, all you had to do was submit the measurements and weight of the fish.

Lawton died in the 1970s, but the fish stayed atop IGFA records until 1991, when suspicions arose about a photo of the record fish. Detailed photo analysis seemed to indicate the fish was nowhere near the 64.5-inch length Lawton had claimed. In fact, it seemed the fish wouldn't even have hit the magical 60-inch mark.

During the investigation, a previously unknown photo of the alleged record muskie surfaced--one with a caption that indicated a weight of 49.5 pounds. What was more, interviews with some of the remaining witnesses, including Lawton's own family, didn't seem to back the near-70-pound muskie story, either.

With this much evidence, the IGFA and Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame struck the Lawton muskie from the record books forever.

One final case involves a monster smallmouth that David Hayes reportedly caught from big-bass factory Dale Hollow Lake in 1978. The recorded weight was 11 pounds 15 ounces until 1995, when an old affidavit surfaced, which claimed the Hayes fish only weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces. A local guide, named John Barlow, claimed to have stuffed three pounds worth of weight into the fish's gut. Hayes supposedly was unaware of the tampering the whole time. Barlow even passed a lie-detector test when questioned about the incident. With this new evidence, the IGFA disqualified the Hayes bass in 1996.

However, something didn't add up about Barlow's story. The Hayes bass just didn't look like a smaller fish. Critics pointed out how the fish's length and girth were consistent with a 12-pound fish. Further investigation turned up a witness who said Barlow wasn't even at Cedar Hill Resort, where the fish was weighed, on the day Hayes caught it.

The investigation also revealed that Barlow and the other men involved with the affidavit all had a bone to pick with Cedar Hill Resort. Most of the other men allegedly involved had passed by the time the claims against the Hayes bass were made. The kicker came in 1998, when Barlow's brother made a deathbed confession that Barlow's story was a fabrication, and the fish was real.

A lack of eyewitnesses and other evidence contrary to the Barlow story and affidavit claims led the IGFA to reinstate the Hayes smallmouth as the rightful world record in 1999.

The obvious moral of these stories is that things sometimes aren't always what they seem. Events happen either in or out of an angler's control that can turn a great catch into a total headache. I gotta admit one thing, though: They all sure make for some good reading. Hope you agree.