Bigger Fish Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jakub Vágner

A goonch is also known as a devil catfish, with the scientific name Bagarius bagarius.

The record setting goonch was caught in 2009, in the River Ramganga in India. It measured 1.57 metres long!
Jakub holds several other fishy records, and is a passionate proponent of catch and release.
The catch was verified, and the record awarded by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA)

Somewhat gruesomely, there are accounts of goonch eating human corpses from religious pyres along the Kali river in the Himalayas.

Answer: Beluga sturgeon

The largest catch on record for a Beluga weighed 3463 lbs, and was 29 feet 8 inches long! The female fish was taken from the Volga river in 1827.
Catches that big are incredibly rare nowadays as overfishing and pollution have severely reduced both numbers and lifespan. The Beluga grows throughout its life, and it takes many years to attain such a massive size.

Beluga are classed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, and all imports of Beluga products were banned in the United States in 2005.

Answer: Bluefin tuna

The Pacific bluefin tuna weighed 907 lb 6 oz. It took Donna over four hours to wrestle it aboard her boat off Three Kings Island in New Zealand.
The largest Atlantic bluefin tuna on record tipped the scales at 1496 lbs, and was caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1979.

Answer: Minnow

Even teeny tiny fish species have their giants!
The biggest stickleback catch registered with the British Record (Rod Caught) Fish Committee (BRFC) weighed in at just 8g. It was caught in a lake in Nottinghamshire in 2019.

The minnow record stands at a whopping 24g (just under one ounce), caught in a lake near Durham in 1998.

Answer: Great white sharks are now a protected species

The shark was caught by Alfred Dean in 1959, off Ceduna Australia.
Several of the IGFA records for game fish are likely to stand for the foreseeable future as they are now protected in most of the world after being driven to the brink of extinction by human activity.
"Jaws" released in 1975 has been said to be partly responsible for the persecution and greatly increased hunting of the great white shark, which led to population decline until protections were put in place in the 1980s. Numbers have increased since then, although the species is still considered vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Answer: Red

The biggest black marlin on record weighed in at 1560 lbs, and was caught in Peruvian waters.
Angling legend Alfred Glassel Jr. made the monumental catch back in 1953, making it one of the longest standing IGFA World Records to date. The Marlin, and some other record breaking fish Glassell caught, are now on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The largest blue marlin on record are a Pacific weighing 1376 lbs and an Atlantic weighing 1402 lbs.
White marlin are endangered, and there are strict rules about fishing for them. It is illegal to remove one from the water when it is hooked, and they are strictly catch and release. These rules, aimed at conserving the species, preclude weighing the fish, so there is no record for the heaviest catch.

Answer: Not a lot, swordfish have no teeth

The remains of the record breaking catch are on display at the International Game Fishing Association Museum in Miami, Florida.
Juvenile swordfish have both teeth and scales, but these are lost as the fish mature into adulthood.

Answer: It got entangled in the anchor chain

Captain Khan was angling about seven miles out from the town of Brielle, when the hooked Manta became tangled with the anchor chain. Its struggles nearly capsized the vessel and the coastguard were called. They arrived just in time to shoot the ray which was then towed back to shore.
Although not an official record I thought this one deserved a mention here.

Answer: Salmon

Her feat made Georgina a household name in her native Scotland. The actual fish was sent to Perth Infirmary and fed to the staff and patients the following day.
Although much was made of the record breaking catch by the "Fly Fishers Club" in Scotland, Georgina was not allowed to join, or even set foot on the premises as the club was strictly men only!
Given that salmon nowadays are smaller in general as a species, Georgina's record could easily stand for another hundred years.

Answer: Grouper

The massive fish was caught by Lynn Joyner.
This is another record likely to stand for a long time, as the grouper population has been protected from fishing since 1990.
Fernandina Beach is the most northerly city on the Atlantic coast of Florida, and is nicknamed "Island of Eight Flags" as it has changed hands several times since the 16th century when it was first settled by Europeans.