Saturday, March 24, 2007

Ewout's monster pike was no mystery

Pictures of the fish shown on Angling Times's front cover have been circulating on the internet ever since dutch angler Ewout Blom caught it from a stillwater in the south of the country, in March 2006.

Since then, the fish has been variously claimed to have come from a lake in America and the Baltic.

It has also been linked to a story of a large 40lbs-plus pike which was landed after it grabbed a smaller fish on the way in.

The following account of the capture surfaced on US fishing forums last summer after pike anglers in America became suspicious:

“This pike was caught on the 6th of March 2006 by Dutch fisherman Ewout Blom in a pretty big lake in the south of Holland, I know the name of the lake from where quite a number of 40 plus pikes were caught and released but promised not to mention the name to avoid too heavy fishing pressure.

"This pike had a length of 127 cm and a weight of 19,5 kilo and was caught trolling with a Rapala Super Shad Rap in perch colour and I have about 10 original digital pictures of this fish.

"For the metric-impaired (such as yours truly), 127cm and 19.4 kilos works out to right around 50 inches, and just barely shy of 43 pounds.”