I can without any doubt honestly say that I've never caught the biggest fish in the lake....Not yet at least.

Sometimes I do good to grab the biggest fish in the livewell.

My biggest swimbait bass was from a tiny pond I can easily cast across, it was 6lbs. I was shocked there was any close to that size in there.

I've held the lake record for flathead catfish for a few years at another lake and it was much larger than any other than had been caught there but I wouldn't be surprised if a bigger one was in it, especially since I released mine.

Have you ever caught the biggest fish in the lake?

 

Didn't have to!  ?

 

 

In 1993 I caught the biggest Tiger Muskie that year in the Potomac river according to the DNR at 17-1. At the time I was only 6ozs away from the state record and this was the first one I caught.

 

Allen

Absolutely know I have for sure - I put it in there to begin with. Have not caught it in years though, I think someone caught it and kept it. Was a 22lb blue cat and there are no blue cats in my pond other than the tiny ones i threw in there.

Does my Koi pond count?  If so, then yes.

 

He wasn't the biggest fish in the lake that I caught him in, but he is the biggest in the body of water he was released in.

On 3/21/2019 at 9:35 PM, flyfisher said:

If i ever was positive i caught the largest fish i would probably stop fishing

This. I'd still fish because it's fun but a very large portion of my drive to go fishing is the "what-if" factor. 

 

You wouldn't see me out in 40 degrees and gloves if I knew I had already caught the biggest fish in a given lake. 

I fish a lot of very small, I mean like *** acre, ponds and am often amazed at how many 2-3lb bass I can pull out of some of these tiny spots.  Any bass over 3lb counts as “the biggest” unitl I catch a bigger one.  

Nope!  Lakes I live around claim the state record smallmouth and musky.  I'm sure I caught the lake's largest turtle... on spinning gear with 10lb PE line... had an 8lb flouro leader... used a Crazy Alberto joining knot.  ... backreeled.

 

oe

is it legal to tag fish for individual research? might be interesting.

 

another idea... what if you tagged fish when you stock them and the tag connects to your electronics, the new era of fish finders

I know I've caught the biggest fish in my pond. I've got 3 big girls swimming around in there. I've put steel to all 3. The biggest was 9.6 last year post spawn. The other 2 are mid 8 pounders. The biggest was bedding right off my dock this year. I know she's a double digit this year. I tried for several hours over the course of a few days to get her to eat. She's too well trained now. I did manage to get a nice health 6ish to eat. I didn't put her on a scale she was back in the water seconds after I put her on the bank. Took one pic and released her to lay her eggs. It's getting tough to catch the big fish anymore. I've caught them all more than once. Now its mostly the little ones that I can get to bite. I probably need to give them a break for a few years. But it's so nice to walk down to the dock and untie the Bass Raider and fish my way around the 5ish acre pond.

Of COURSE, it's impossible to know but I'll play...because after the last fish I caught on this 120+ acre lake, I wondered the same thing. It's a public lake, on the state land and during the summer, it's pounded on nearly a daily basis with swimmers, people in canoes, kayaks, boaters (although there's a fairly low speed limit) and an insane number of people out fishing. Over the last several years that I've gone there, I've caught an awful lot of 12-14" bass. Only 2 people that I've talked to who have fished there regularly have said they had something bigger. One was a 4 that was released, and another was a 5, that this person made sure to show everyone as she paddled back in to let us know she was going to eat good tonight. That was weird. 

 

The one I got last week was significantly larger than either of those or the 5 I caught last year. By a couple seconds into the fight, I started to wonder how big the pike were in the lake but since it didn't feel like I pike, I started to wonder if one of the big carp had grabbed my chatterbait. We're in Michigan, so there aren't many up here that are caught at that size. I'm not saying that I DID catch the largest in the lake, but it was definitely big enough for me to wonder about. Based on all of the other fish that me and others have caught there, I would say it's gotta be up there. 

 

But like someone else said, it's the "what if?" Ha, ha, since listening to all the so-called Bigfoot experts I became convinced YEARS ago that it doesn't exist...so, I guess fishing takes that place.

I haven't but my buddy has.  We fish a pond that has lots of small bass and he caught one over 9 one year and a couple of years later he caught the same fish that was way over 10 in the same place.  

I feel like I was really close to catching the largest bass in the small lake I fished yesterday.  Caught my personal best of 5-12, 21.25".  That's pretty good for Iowa.

So, another general question about the biggest fish (plural) in the lake. I've been giving this a lot more thought since I've had several really big ones already this year. More catches and more that got lose than all other years combined...including an almost 15 year hiatus. I know spring is that time to do it but an interesting thing about this is that everybody, myself included, previously regarded one of the lakes as a small fish lake. The more I've learned about bigger fish and the places I've caught them, the more I've been thinking that maybe the real challenge isn't NECESSARILY that they're more or less rare, but that in certain bodies of water, they've gotten very good at remaining hidden or at least being very difficult to catch....