The votes are in and, though it was a good battle down to the end, Adam Baker and his chrome slab of Sacramento River Chinook Salmon edged out Laura’s beautiful Clearwater steelhead by a margin of 57% to 43%. As you can see from the chart below, the votes were pretty evenly spread out across the US, but Adam definitely carried Europe and that random area somewhere off the coast of Nigeria!
For his efforts, Adam wins a guided fishing trip for 2 with top-notch Pacific Northwest guide, Bill “Swanny” Swann of Swanny’s Fishing!
Okay, so this really has el zippo to do with fishing, but here’s a music video my brother and sister-in-law (Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee) of Smith & Lee Design just completed for folk artist Matt Bauer
It’s a crazy-powerful song and the video is epic. My peeps shot it on my folk’s property in Auburn, CA…and…okay, here’s the fishing connection: The creek in the video is where I grew up trout fishing. How’s that for tying everything together! :)
Like the drawn-out college bowl season, we’ve got one more championship to be decided before we close the book on 2011. I am, of course, referring to the Smoker of the Year Contest, in which we crown the angler who caught the ugliest, darkest…I’d never touch that thing with my bare hands…fish of the season. It’s gonna be tough to top the 2010 Smoker Champ, which was about as disgusting as you could imagine, but we’ll see how they do. So, without further adieu, here are your finalists: Who gets the coveted Harrison Ibach Smoker of the Year Trophy for 2011??
Well, I can think of a lot of places I’d rather be on a Monday morning in January…and flipping a line out into 80 degree water ranks high on the list! I can’t remember if I even caught anything on this particular day…and really, when you’re in a spot like this, who cares??
Digging around in the ol’ photo vault this morning, I ran across this photo…can’t even remember where I was fishing I took it…but it reminded me of a quote I saw about 20 years ago that has always stuck with me:
“If there’s magic in this world, it lies in moving water…amen.”
Amen, indeed! Think I need to go steelhead fishing now. Guess garage cleanup day gets postponed…again!
Holy beer batter Batman, 2011 may just go down as the “Year of the Halibut!” There were three absolute monsters taken last fall that are more in the “blimp hangar door” class than barn doors.
First up is this one above from Norway which weighed an almost hard to fathom 539 pounds! Here’s the link
This monster came from the waters off Gustavus, Alaska (near Glacier Bay) and was 95 inches long and weighed 482.5 pounds! Read more at Bloody Decks
Then there was the one from Iceland that tipped the scales to 485 pounds! See more at Outdoor Life
Our English correspondent and all-around fishing fool, Richard Masters, sent in this report of some very civilized fishing he and a chum did last week in the Lake District of Northern England. Here’s the story..
“This was a post Christmas trip with my bud, Mark Atherton,” says Masters. “Prompted by the wives telling us to ‘get out from under their feet’ so they could visit the shops for the sales….” [click to continue…]
This monster came from the waters off Gustavus, Alaska (near Glacier Bay) and was 95 inches long and weighed 482.5 pounds! Read more at 
