Man that thing is a monster!!!

Great catch. Terrible decision afterwards. The fish was kept and was going to be made into a wall mount. Nothing like removing the best line of genetics in the lake! It was about to spawn. You would think that a tournament fisherman would know better!

Take a ton of pics and measurements and release her! Retarded!

I'm all about CPR (Catch, Photograph, Release), but some states require such lengthy "verification" of the catch (dorsal fin samples, tracking down Game & Fish, etc) that it would do extreme harm to the fish to have her out of the water that long. Also, in this particular incident, if he would have released the fish after the Warden weighed the fish the first time (improperly), it would have just been a big catch, not the State Record.

Although, nothing wrong with a "big catch" lol.

I'm not sure what I would have done in that situation, would have been really hard to keep/kill the fish. But I'm not going to fault the guy.