Sign up for Your FREE Copy of the Secret Sauce Walleye Bait Recipe Report! The inhabitants of this water like clear water with gravel bottoms. The replica fish is very obviously much larger. South Fork, Middle Fork, and Devil's fork see a lot of activity as the walleyes congregate in the gravel-bottomed shallows. It weighed 21lbs.1oz. Did you know the world record Walleye was caught in Tennessee? The females typically will not enter the spawning beds until nighttime. Here's how that happened. If you think you're working the bait slow, go even slower. On top of that, if the fish had been the dimensions Harper had claimed, it would have weighed something on the order of forty pounds. Although spawn is the most popular season on this lake, walleye can be caught year round. The taxidermist, in order to get the job of mounting the fish, had to promise Nelson that he would save the meat. Mr. Dzialo wrote to all the state wildlife agencies and to the IGFA informing them of his decision. She noticed how big the walleye was and then realized the fish could, potentially, make this fishing trip special. Keep an eye out for these spots and keep your presentation slow when you do find them. Mabry Harper's fish was disqualified in the mid-90s because photo analysis showed the fish could not weigh more than 18 pounds. Marby Harper’s 25-pound record has stood the test of time. Just read an article in the local paper. 66-67. An Alicia, Ark., man landed a state record saugeye Monday -- and he almost didn't know it. On top of that there was no confirmation of the weight by official sources on officially calibrated scales to offset the doubt created by the photographic measurements. Too bad for Al Nelson that this didn't happen before 1982, because although the tournament paid him $10,000 for setting a new state record, the prize for setting a new world record would have been $25,000. For more than thirty years, angler Mark Wallace has held the men's 2-kilogram (4 pound) line class world record for walleye with a 8.27-kilogram (18 pounds, 4 ounces) fish he caught on March 12, 1983 while fishing the North Little Red River in Arkansas — not far from the infamous Greers Ferry Lake. The fog on the lake was so dense that it took him four hours to get back to the Marina and it was two more hours before a tournament official (Carl Perrin, state fisheries biologist) arrived to weigh it in. (Note: AGFC literature says it was caught on the 12th, but I went with the date reported in the C.C. Until the locals discovered them in the late 1970's, these fish became numerous and large. Otherwise you will need to wait until nightfall. The guy that answered the phone said he didn't even know if the fish was ever mounted. The weight was 22 pounds 11 ounces. If you want to view the taxidermist's mount of Al Nelson's World Record Walleye, go to the visitor information center at Fairfield Bay. Roberts, WI. WORLD RECORD WALLEYE 25 LBS!!! The females' eggs are fully formed and they are feeding heavily before the spawn. Old Hickory Lake may not lead you to the biggest walleye the world has to offer, but at the end of the day Old Hickory Lake will give you a great shot of catching a big one. Arkansas Democrat Gazette: 15Sep1996, section C, page 1. There's no way he can hold the tournament responsible for that kind of cash fifteen to twenty years after the fact, but I'm sure it crossed his mind. The catch not only earned the angler a world record, it also earned him first place in a local tournament. After the world record catch, Greers Ferry Lake experienced an insurgence of fishing. It has been a record for more than 50 years and is just a few years shy of turning 60. Then you go to tournament records and find all the officially verified fish that were that length and you see how much they weighed. In their first walleye tournament last year the big fish were running in the 8-9 pound range and that over the three days, some 120 boats weighed about a thousand fish. There will be a lot of them and they will be aggressive, so this is a great opportunity if you are after numbers. Next to that photo is a picture of a man holding a replica that was built to the specifications given by Harper when he applied for official recognition of his record. I heard the actual record was from Bull Shoals in Arkansas… if I remember right. Bull Shoals Lake, a 43,000-acre Corps of Engineers lake on the Missouri-Arkansas line, is the focus of Loving’s winter time walleye fishing trips. Third place, Irma Windorff caught one 19lb-5oz for a MonArk boat. There are a lot of suspicious circumstances surrounding the Harper fish, miscalibrated scales, lack of witnesses or verification by state wildlife officials, refusal by the angler to let anybody measure the mounted fish and so on. It looks to me like the 14 ounce difference in the weights of these two fish could be attributed entirely to roe. The meat was served to a private party of fifteen to eighteen of Nelson's friends at the Red Rooster Restaurant, which Nelson owned at the time. People had been suspicous of the Tennessee fish for a long time. stillakid2. As of 1996, three of the five largest walleyes ever caught were caught in Arkansas. Walleye have their mind on other matters and will let anything to fast go by without a strike. Then came the construction of huge flood control impoundments, giant deepwater lakes like Bull Shoals, Ouachita and Greer's Ferry. Because walleye are freshwater fish, walleye records are only registered for freshwater catches. Irma Windorff's 19-5 was caught on 6 pound test line. Some states list the Tennessee fish as tops, others list the Arkansas fish as tops. Participant. WORLD RECORD WALLEYE The walleye at the top of this trophy case was caught in 1982 by Stick baits and jointed minnows get good responses, but jigs with either spoons or live bait also do well. The one from Tennessee has been stricken from the record books. According to the Paragould Daily Press, Chris Owen caught the 9-pound, .02-ounce saugeye on his third cast of the day at Lake Frierson, shattering the previous record of 6.4 pounds.. At first, Owen believed he had caught a walleye and planned to fillet it and give it to a friend. This year's tournament runs from noon on 12 February to noon on 12 March. The Missouri state record walleye came from Bull Shoals. You can fish from a boat, but many anglers get good results by wading in or casting from the shore. Walleye thrive in colder climates. They've got two this year (the FLW in April and the PWT in May), and the guy on the phone told me that a spear fisherman will occasionally bring in a 15 pounder. Andrew Martinsen's Walleye Fishing Update. Because it's such a marathon the entries are practically all local. I called the marina at Old Hickory Lake, TN, to find out if the mount had been preserved. Once you mark out that the fish is so many sticks of gum long, you can apply that high school algebra that you never thought you'd use and figure the length of the fish in inches. Flip Flop: They have changed it again and have reinstated Mabry Harper's Walleye as the World Record … Greers Ferry Lake has seen an increase in activity since the record catch in 1982. I spoke with Tim Churchill at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, and although he was aware of the controversey based on photographic evidence, he was unaware that one of the recordkeeping organizations had disqualified the Tennessee fish. Posts: 10,469. Cleburne County Times: 3March82 9A:1, 24Feb82 6B:1, 10Mar82 3C:1, 24Mar82 4B:1, 31Mar82 7A:1. Mr. Dzialo found the evidence persuasive enough to disqualify the Tennessee fish in his publication not because it was proven to be underweight, but because there was no longer enough evidence to support the claim that it weighed 25 pounds. The 1990s were particularly hard on the walleye numbers. Walleye in this lake seem to favor the major tributaries for spawning. From other photo measurements it didn't look like the Tennessee fish was that much broader than the other fish of similar length. Al Nelson of Higden, Arkansas caught the record breaking walleye during a fishing tournament sponsored by Pepsi-Cola and Fairfield Bay. Must be something in the water. They aren't found everywhere, so you may need to search harder than in other lakes. You pick out something that is the same distance from the camera as the fish and then you use that to measure the fish. 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