The same week the world record Brown Trout was caught out of the Big Manistee River in Michigan a pending world record Rainbow trout was caught in Canada.
Here is the story: In the late-night darkness of Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009, Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, resident Sean Konrad boated what is now awaiting certification as the new all-tackle world-record rainbow trout. The fish weighed a staggering 48 pounds, beating the current 43-pound 10-ounce world record (which was caught by his identical twin brother, Adam, in 2007) by 4 pounds 6 ounces. Both fish came from Diefenbaker Lake, in Saskatchewan, Canada.
As Paul Harvey would say…”and now for the rest of the story.” Can’t wait to the see the first mutant Tarpon!!!
From wired.com
In an age of biotechnological juicing, not even the easygoing pastime of fishing is free from controversies over artificial enhancement.
On September 5, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad caught a 48-pound, world-record rainbow trout. The fish came from Lake Diefenbaker, where trout genetically engineered to grow extra-big escaped from a fish farm nine years ago.
The previous world record was held by Sean’s twin brother Adam, who pulled a 43-pound, 10-ounce rainbow trout from Lake Diefenbaker in 2007. That catch sparked online debate over the legitimacy of Lake Diefenbaker’s farm-born, genetically-engineered rainbows. Technically known as triploids, they’re designed with three sets of chromosomes, making them sterile and channeling energies normally spent reproducing towards growth.
In 2007, on a message board of the International Game Fish Association, the angling world’s record- and ethics-keeping body, some fishermen argued that triploids were unnatural, as divorced from the sport’s history as Barry Bonds’ home runs were from Hank Aaron’s.
The IGFA refused to make a distinction between natural and GM fish. Neither would they distinguish between species caught in their traditional waters and those introduced into new, growth-friendly environments, such as largemouth bass whose extra-large ancestors were imported from Florida to California in the 1960s.
But to purists, there was a difference between transplantation and outright manufacture.
The Konrad brothers’ response on the message board was curt: “Stop crying and start fishing.”
Now they’ve caught another record-breaking trout. Or have they?