DULUTH, Minn. — The International Game Fish Association has scoured its records database to find out which lure types and which lure brands have caught the most world-record fish, and the results probably won't surprise many Northland anglers.
The association looked at 19,600 records for 1,649 species of fresh and saltwater fish, including 6,714 current record holders and 12,946 retired records, fish that once held the record but have since been beaten.
The fish species include everything from Acara Paragaio, to Zander Volga. There are 37 types of bass alone, including largemouth, smallmouth, guadalupe, striped, spotted and white, among others.
The results were released Tuesday.
Men caught 14,003, 71%, of the record fish. The records include the largest overall fish of each species and also line-class records for the size fishing line used.
The International Game Fish Association is a nonprofit organization founded in 1939 and "committed to the conservation of game fish and the promotion of responsible, ethical angling practices, through science, education, rulemaking, record keeping and recognition of outstanding accomplishments in the field of angling."
The association maintains the world records for all species of game fish. You can search all records at igfa.org, where you can also download the application to submit a potential record, learn about scale certification and pretest your fishing line.
Many anglers hold more than one record, and 208 people hold 10 or more records each. The most records held is 433, by Martin Arostegui. His records include 85 fish species, from bluegill, to barracuda, to carp, to tuna.
Not all anglers submitted complete data with their record fish applications, so the lure type or brand isn't known for all record fish. There were 2,877 different lure entries. Some anglers provided more detail than others regarding the lure they used to catch a record fish. Some entries just use the word "lure," without any other identification. Others provided minimal detail, such as the word "jig," without sharing the type, brand, size or color.
And the winners are: Jigs have by far caught the most record fish — more than five times more records than the No. 2 lure, spoons. And Rapala lures have by far caught the most record fish, nearly five times the next-closest competitor.
Jigs are the most commonly used lures to catch walleyes — the most popular game fish in Minnesota — often in conjunction with live bait or plastic bait imitators.
Rapala has strong Minnesota ties. The Finnish company's U.S. headquarters are based here and the one-time handmade lures were first imported to the U.S., and first distributed worldwide, by Duluth native Ron Weber starting in the 1950s.
