Artist Martin Simpson of New Zealand with Brian’s finished portrait and probably the biggest brown trout he will ever paint! http://web.me.com/martinsimpson1/Martin_Simpson/Welcome.html
“Brian Yamamoto, of Fairbanks, Alaska, released what may be the largest brown trout ever caught on rod and line, and probably the largest ever with a fly rod.
On March 14, 2008, Yamamoto was enjoying his last day fishing the Rio Grande in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego. He was fishing Maxi’s pool in the evening, caught an 8-pound brown on a Woolly Bugger, and then switched to a #4 Muddler Minnow.
On his first pass down the pool with the Muddler, the big fish grabbed the fly, made 5 or 6 deep, throbbing head shakes and then jumped clear of the water four times. The immense trout ran to the top and then the bottom of the pool where Yamamoto stood his ground. The trout jumped three more times before guide Jorge Castro slid a net under it.
The hook-jawed male trout “bottomed out” a 30-pound BogaGrip and was then carefully measured: girth 25 inches; length 46 inches. Based on the formula weight = length x girth2 / 690 the fish weighed 41.66 pounds…
The current International Game and Fish Association (IGFA) all-tackle record brown trout is a 40-pound, 4-ounce fish from the Little Red River, Arkansas. IGFA fly-rod line class records range from 12 to 35 pounds and all but one of those fish were also taken from the Rio Grande.
Yamamoto was using a 15-foot Snowbee Spey rod and a 750-grain Rio Skagit line with a 5-foot cheater, 15-foot type 3 sinking tip, and 9-foot 16-pound flurocarbon tapered leader.
On his last cast the same evening, Yamamoto hooked and landed a 24 pound brown on a 4 inch-long olive Sculpin imitation. He called the trip to Maria Behety Lodge (booked through the Fly Shop at Redding, California) “the trip of a lifetime.”
If only more than 89 people could read this..