New World Record Rainbow

[flyfishmaster]

Well the Konrad brothers from Saskatchewan did it again, they beat there last record and caught a 48-pound rainbow out of Saskatchewan's Lake Diefenbaker.

Here is the story from ESPNOutdoors:

The 36th week of 2009 will forever be known as "Trout Week" in North America.

On Sept. 5, Canadian angler Sean Konrad obliterated the IGFA all-tackle world rainbow record with a 48-pound rainbow out of Saskatchewan's Lake Diefenbaker, eclipsing a 2-year-old record held by his twin brother.

Four days later, retired construction manager Tom Healy eclipsed the world German brown mark with a 41-pound, 7-ounce monster on Michigan's Manistee River.

Two trout, 89 pounds, less than a week apart. Here are their stories:

The rainbow warriors

Even looking at the photos, it takes some suspension of disbelief to wrap your mind around a 48-pound rainbow trout. The dimensions seem freakish and otherwordly -- 42 inches long with a 32-inch girth -- and the tiny head looks like a science experiment gone wrong attached to the basketball-round rotundity of the belly.

It's classic triploid rainbow, though -- enormous girth, wide tail, thick caudal peduncle -- and as of around midnight on Sept. 5, it became the new (certification-pending) all-tackle world record.

Just another late-summer night for Sean and Adam Konrad, the Canadian twins who, over the course of the past two years, have ascended to cult status rivaling that of Mario and Luigi. Only for fishing geeks, not gaming geeks.

Fishing on the same impoundment where his younger brother had broken one of the Holy Grails of fishing records in 2007 with a 43-pound, 10-ounce IGFA all-tackle record rainbow -- a fish that broke a 37-year-old mark -- Sean Konrad pushed the rainbow record just shy of the 50-pound mark with an amorphous 48-pound triploid that absorbed a Rapala on Diefenbaker, a 106,000-acre impoundment of the South Saskatchewan and Que'Appele Rivers in the windswept Canadian Prairie country 140 miles west of Regina.

"Adam had been joking with me earlier, 'You know, man, we have to get you a 40-pounder in the books,' because I hadn't gotten one yet," Sean Konrad said. "Adam already had the 43-pounder.

"He caught a 41.2 that holds the 20-pound line class, and a 40.1 that holds the 12-pound record. I kept telling him 'I know, I know, it'll happen. I'll get one.' Well, I got one."

The Konrads' mind-blowing success at Diefenbaker -- Sean estimates they've caught more than 300 fish over 20 pounds and several over 30 -- has turned them into the fishing ninjas as much as the fishing geeks: As a necessity, almost all of their fishing is done at night, when they can escape the squadrons of spies and tagalongs trying to ferret out their honey holes.

"If there are people out, we don't even try to fish," Sean said. "We have so many locals trying to figure out what we're doing, we pretty much limit it to nighttime now."

Consequently, Sean Konrad's first look at his 48-pounder was via headlamp, in the pitch-black middle of the night. After wrestling the big pig into the net and guesstimating that it was an honest 40, the twins loaded the fish into a cooler, iced it down and brought it to a certified post-office scale the next morning.

That scale pegged at 40, but it wasn't until they subsequently put the fish on an IGFA-certified Chatillon scale that Sean realized that he'd blasted his twin's world record by nearly 5 pounds.

"When we weighed it we started freaking out," Konrad said. "I told Adam, 'It's 48,' and he was stunned. He goes 'WHAT ... 48 ... WHAT?'"

Diefenbaker's rainbow production is the result of commercially raised sterile rainbows (triploids) escaping local growing pens in 2000, when roughly a half-million fish entered the lake through a damaged net at CanGro Fish Farm. Because they're genetically engineered to have three sets of chromosomes instead of two, their growth rate is substantially higher than a diploid rainbow because all of their living energy goes into feeding, with no physical stressors related to spawning.

Biologists estimate that Lake Diefenbaker's trout could survive for upwards of 20 years, but the lake is almost certainly on the downward side of a steep growth curve that started with the original half-million escapees. That said, Sean Konrad doesn't discount the possibility of a 50-pounder.

"We've hooked a couple of fish that have almost completely spooled us before we lost them," he says. "It seems there might be a bigger fish out there, but I do think we're pushing about up against the biggest."

Additional triploids are stocked directly into the lake as well, where they immediately belly up to a buffet of forage that includes everything from minnows to crayfish.

"We think they eat everything," Konrad said. "We've found crayfish inside of 'em, weeds, minnows, small whitefish ... there's a big forage base. I suppose once the lake runs out of food, they'd die off, but I don't see that happening. There's really not that many trout, and it seems like there's always going to be food available."

[OKFlyFisher44]

That is unreal. Can you imagine hooking into a fish like with a 5wt rod? No chance. But that is amazing, even cooler is the they're brothers and young guys at that...

[Quillback]

Maybe they should start stocking triploids in the local tailwater fisheries.

[RSBreth]

I don't really think the "GE" (genetically enhanced) Rainbows should count. But the IGFA doesn't consult me on these matters, so I guess it'll stand.

[Phil Lilley]

They should have a separate category for generically altered species cause in the future, they'll come up with more of these freaks and the natural, original species will get lost.

[Gavin]

I'd agree...triploids & pellet pigs need a little asterisk next too them in the record books..Same can be said for a distinction between tailwater vs. freestone fish. Was the Arkansas record a triploid too? Cheers.

[hoglaw]

Are you talking about the Arkasnas browns? I think our browns are naturally reproducing, but I could be wrong.

[Poke 'Em]

I've got to agree. GE and pellet-raised fish belong in a category of their own. The fact that the Missouri state record rainbow came from Roaring River is an absolute joke.

[Brian K. Shaffer]

R/R let that fish go the day they weighed it. It broke the Taney record by a mere one ounce.

Brian

[FishinCricket]

They may be genetically engineered or just "pellet pigs", but you still gotta:

a. Get em to bite

b. Be able to fight em in

(before I get slammed, I see y'alls point... Jest sayin')