How much is the biggest barracuda? The biggest barracuda can really be huge, though it’s not very common. Mature biggest barracuda specimens are often round 60–100 cm (24–39 in) in size and weigh 2.5–9.0 kg (5.5–19.8 lb). Exceptionally biggest barracuda specimens can exceed 1.5 m (4.9 ft) and weigh over 23 kg (51 lb).
Biggest barracuda size
A source mentioned, fishing for tarpon was gradual on the Cuanza River in Angola, so when Thomas Gibson hooked into an enormous fish that took a scorching run and stayed near the floor, he and his fishing associate thought, lastly, a tarpon.
However what got here to the boat was not solely an enormous fish, however an enormous shock.
“It got here to the boat pretty simply (too simple for a tarpon!) and as soon as I obtained maintain of the chief and pulled it as much as the floor, we noticed it was a HUGE barracuda,” Cam Nicolson wrote in an e-mail to GrindTV Out of doors. “It was larger than any barracuda I had seen.”
The barracuda—a Guinean barracuda, to be precise—measured 6.9 toes lengthy and weighed a possible all-tackle world-record 102 kilos.
“I’ve by no means seen something prefer it,” Iain Nicolson, Cam’s brother, instructed Sport Fishing.
Certainly, Guinean barracuda within the Cuanza River usually common 10 to 20 kilos with the most important the Nicolsons of Angola have caught beforehand being around 65 kilos.
Gibson, a Houston resident who’s a professional at catching tarpon, submitted the latest catch to the Worldwide Recreation Fish Affiliation, the keeper of fishing world data. The IGFA is at the moment reviewing the potential file.
The present file is 101 kilos, three ounces, additionally caught in Africa. That fish was landed by Dr. Cyril Fabre in Olende, Gabon.
Amazingly, the one Gibson hooked took lower than 10 minutes to land, however it got here with one harrowing second.
“We solely had a lip gaff on board in order that was a little bit too near the enamel for consolation,” Cam Nicolson mentioned.
The opposite supply says Discipline & Stream profiled Thomas Gibson Jr. of Houston as “Texas’ tarpon guru,” in 1991.
On the time he’d caught 973 tarpons–including the Texas state file and two Worldwide Recreation Fish Affiliation line-class data.
Gibson, 75, has since run his tally to greater than 1,400 tarpon and counting, and he has added much more noteworthy catches to his title, together with a number of IGFA line-class data and a 230-pound tarpon caught in 1993 (pictured at backside) that also reigns because of the Louisiana state file.
However, none stunned him practically as a lot as to his most up-to-date catch, a 102-pound Guinean barracuda that’s the pending IGFA all-tackle world file.
Gibson caught the ‘Cuda on February 14 whereas trolling for tarpon close to the mouth of the Cuanza River in Angola.
He has traveled to the west coast of Africa for the previous 9 years to chase the fish that hooked his coronary heart again in 1949 when he caught his first one as an 11-year-old boy close to his childhood house on the Panama Canal.
“I’ve fished all around the world,” Gibson says. “Gabon, Angola, Louisiana, Texas, Boca Grande, Key West. In all places there is the tarpon. At all times searching for the most important ones.”
Fishing on the Cuanza proved to be gradual throughout his seven-day journey in February.
Alongside a stretch of shoreline the place final yr he caught 28 tarpons–10 of them over 200 pounds–this yr he tempted just one strike, and that fish broke off.
So Gibson instructed to his fishing associate, Cam Nicolson, that they troll in an effort to attempt to find the tarpon. That is when the barracuda struck.
“He pulled out all types of line,” Gibson says. “Oh, man! We’re wanting again, ready for this factor to leap. It by no means jumped.”
Gibson says tarpon hooked within the high of the mouth typically do not leap, and he instructed Nicolson that was precisely what he believed had occurred together with his red-and-white Rapala lure.
It took him solely 10 minutes to get the fish to the boat and seeing the form of it within the murky water under, he nonetheless could not say for positive what he’d caught.
“Impulsively I pulled it up, and Cam mentioned, ‘Jesus! What’s that? It seems to be like a crocodile with no legs!'”
With solely a small hand-gaff aboard, the anglers had been underequipped to take care of an intimidatingly toothy barracuda, particularly one practically seven toes lengthy.
However, as soon as they hauled it over the gunwales, Gibson says, “It by no means wiggled once more.”
Nicolson and his household, who stay in Angola, maintain a number of barracuda data themselves.
“They’ve caught in all probability a dozen filefish on his boat,” says Gibson, who often releases each catch.
“He mentioned he’d by no means seen something like this. He thought we would higher take it in, so that is what we did.”
The massive barracuda weighed 46. Four kilograms–102 kilos, eight oz.–narrowly topping the present all-tackle IGFA world file, a 45.9-kilo (101-pound, three oz.) fish caught within the west African nation of Gabon in 2002 by Dr. Cyril Fabre. Gibson’s sudden prize stretched a formidable 6′ 10.7″ lengthy, with a girth of 27 inches.
If remaining approval is granted by IGFA, as anticipated, the file would be the second all-tackle mark for Gibson, a former worker of NASA who managed spacecraft software program on the Mercury, Apollo, and Area Shuttle tasks from 1959 to 1996.
His first, a Jack Crevalle caught in 1982, was best in 1991 by his buddy Nicolson. The Texas state file, a 210-pound tarpon, was damaged in 2009 after 36 years within the guide.
Actually, of the 9 data he has earned in a lifetime of fishing, solely the Louisiana state-record tarpon and the world-record barracuda are present. “The remainder is, as they are saying, ‘retired,'” Gibson says. “Like me.”
On his solution to catching greater than 1,400 tarpons, 90 of which had been greater than 200 kilos, one massive file has eluded Gibson.
“I would fairly have the all-tackle tarpon record–in reality, I used to be in a ship 300 yards away when the man caught the 286-pounder that’s the present world record–but this barracuda was definitely good,” he says.
“It made the journey worthwhile. Anytime you catch an extremely excellent fish, it is thrilling. They’re all good.”
One other supply says Canadian Christian Loranger hooked this 87 lb. 3oz. Nice Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) in September of 2012 off the coast of Christmas Island within the Indian Ocean. He fought greater than two hours earlier than touchdown it and setting a brand new IGFA file of the biggest barracuda.
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