Some years back I managed to land quite a large Atlantic Salmon from northern Norway. When I got back to the bank, it was measured 129 cm in length and we weighted it in a C&R sack. This kind of sack is very good, because it weights almost nothing, even when it gets wet. It is very easy to pack to the fishing bag and it doesn’t hurt the fish. The salmon was a female, bright one with a marks from the sea lice. I was totally amazed because I never believed, that female of that size can even be true.
Anyway, I had a Salter´s spring scale up to 20 kg, which is very sharp and a good scale. When we lift the salmon up with a bag, the Salter went down to the bottom, and didn’t move at all. It was totally at bottom. Fortunately my very good fishing pal Aki had his digital scale in the car. That one was able to operate up to 25 kg. We lifted up the salmon with Aki´s scale, and scale showed figures from 20,6 to 21.7 kg´s. We decide to go with the lowest weight and let fish go back in to the river. I can tell you, it was really big female salmon…
Of course it is still my personal best, and in this life, there must be all the odds with me, if I´m going to break that record. Since the salmon was released I decided to order the reconstruction of it. We had a very good pictures and very precise measurements, and here in Finland was one guy who works with these. He promised to make a trophy for me.
When this guy called me, and told that my fish was ready and shipped, I started to tease my wife about the hanging the fish on our living room. My wife doesn’t understand at all why someone would hang animals on their wall, so I was decide to play with her in this case. One morning I received another message this time from the shipping company, that my fish has arrived. I jumped to the car and drove to the their office to pick up my trophy. It was packed in to a large cardboard box, and it was filled with a newspaper and the bubble plastic. I carried the box to my car and it was so big, that I had to fall back the back seats. I drove back home where my wife and a son were sitting on the terrace having a breakfast. I jumped out of the car, and like a little kid with his new toy, started to rip out the fills.
I took this huge trophy to my arms and with mighty proudness I showed it to my wife. She looked at me with a very strange look in her face, stood up from the chair, opened the front door and said: ”Never”. She then stepped in to the house and closed the door behind. My son looked at me with a question mark on his face and I just stood there and felt very stupid. As you may have guessed I never placed the trophy in our living room. Instead, it hangs on the wall of a Finnish fly fishing shop Helsinki Spey Clave.
With this odd story I´d like to wish Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. And remember: we must save the salmon, nobody else will save it for us.
Yours, Truly
Miki
Hi Miki
I had a similar experience with a large female .
It is all on video only. No measurement .
How can you reconstruct everything ?
I wish I could at least estimate how big the fish was…
Alin