Kayak Angler Breaks His Own Fishing Record Using a Lure He Designed

It was late afternoon and near dinnertime when Matt Born, of Reedsville, West Virginia, made an extended forged with an ultralight outfit. He was fishing from his kayak on a small non-public pond in Preston County, and he hoped to catch a bluegill.

“I’d been engaged on a brand new small spinning lure design I made the earlier night time and was seeing the way it wiggled within the water,” Born tells Out of doors Life. “I made a pair casts and favored the way it was working, so I made an extended forged to some lily pads.”

Utilizing ultralight sort out, he had the small spinner tied on 4-pound-test monofilament. However his new lure attracted a a lot larger fish than he anticipated, and the pickerel hit onerous.

“I had all types of hassle with that fish after I realized it was a giant pickerel,” says Born, 49. “The fish towed me across the pond, and I needed to shortly again off on my reel drag. I assumed it was only a nice-sized pickerel till I bought it near my kayak and noticed it was like an enormous torpedo.”

The one cause the toothy pickerel didn’t sever Born’s line is as a result of his lure had an extended wire physique and was connected with a snap swivel. This saved the monofilament exterior the fish’s enamel because it chomped down on the steel.

“Each time I bought the fish shut and touched its gill plate to try to collar it for touchdown, it dashed away. The fish did that about 5 occasions earlier than I might lastly get my thumb and forefinger round its head and behind the gill covers to carry it aboard my kayak.”

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By that time, he’d fought the fish for round 10 minutes and was already operating late for dinner.

“I known as my spouse Kristy at house and informed her I’d be late as a result of I’d caught a big pickerel that I needed to get measured,” says Born. “She wasn’t blissful. However she and my dad introduced a water tote with an aerator to the lake for the fish. Then my dad and I took it to Morgantown so DNR workers might measure it.”

The 2 met a pair of West Virginia fisheries biologists, Dustin Smith and Emily Dean, in a Walmart car parking zone. They measured and weighed the fish on the tailgate of a pickup truck, the place Born’s pickerel formally taped at 27.95 inches lengthy and weighed 6.65 kilos.

Born knew instantly that his fish was simply sufficiently big to prime the earlier West Virginia size report, as a result of that state record belongs to him. He’d caught his earlier report, a 27.87-inch pickerel, in 2019, and it got here from the identical pond the place he caught the report breaker.

“I’ve my first pickerel report mounted, and I’m going to have my new report mounted too,” Born says. “They’ll be displayed collectively – one trying left, the opposite fish trying proper.”