FiveThirtyEight:
“In late 2009, two men walked into a room somewhere in Japan and found a fisherman hooked up to a polygraph. His name was Manabu Kurita, and he was there to answer some questions. The 32-year-old fishing guide had claimed to have caught a bass that weighed just under 22 pounds, 5 ounces — a weight that would make it co-world-record holder in the all-tackle weight category for largemouth bass, the most hallowed class in all of fishing. The other men in the room were representatives from the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) and, with the polygraph running, they asked Kurita about the precise position of his boat on Japan’s Lake Biwa and the tackle he used to haul in his catch. His answers from the hourlong session evidently passed muster; six months after he hauled the fish in, the catch was certified as the IGFA’s co-world-record holder.”
Interesting story on the history of big bass. To clarify, at the moment there are two recognized subspecies of the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmodies): the northern largemouth (Micropterus salmoides salmoides) and the Florida largemouth (Micropterus salmoides floridanus).
