World-record walleye controversy touched state
It slipped past us quietly, but Arkansas no longer has claim to the world-record walleye.
In 2019, the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wis., reinstated world-record recognition to a discredited Tennessee walleye caught in 1960 by Mabry Harper at Old Hickory Lake.
The world-record walleye, the world-record smallmouth bass, and the world-record largemouth bass are the most controversial stories in fishing. They are similar because they were caught in an era when the concept of freshwater trophy fishing did not exist. Inland anglers fished for food, as Mabry did when he set out on Old Hickory Lake on Aug. 2, 1960 to catch some catfish for supper.
Instead, he caught a 25-pound, 4-ounce walleye that measured 41 inches long with a 29-inch girth.
Fortunately, Harper’s wife insist that Harper have the fish weighed and measured. Harper’s family then ate it, just as George Perry’s family ate the world-record largemouth bass in 1932.
The National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and the International Game Fish Association recognized Harper’s fish as the world record until 1990, when the Fishing Hall of Fame disqualified it after Dick Sternberg questioned the record’s veracity in Outdoor Life.
Sternberg based his challenge on the only known photo of Harper’s walleye. In the photo, the fish did not look big enough. Sternberg compared the length of the fish to the average size of a man’s hands. Sternberg’s analysis convinced the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame to remove Harper’s walleye as the world record and replace it with a 22-pound, 11-ounce walleye caught at Greers Ferry Lake in 1982 by Al Nelson. His fish was 35 inches long with a 27-inch girth.
Trying to estimate a fish’s length against hands is inexact and subjective. The only valid measurement was the size of Harper’s hands, which was unknown. It also hurt that Harper weighed his fish on non-certified scales.
In Harper’s favor was the fact that a Tennessee game warden, James Spurling, witnessed the weighing, and also a second weighing. Spurling documented the weight in two separate affidavits.
Other photos surfaced, including a photo of Harper’s wife holding the fish against the door of a 1959 Plymouth sedan, an item of specific dimensions.
Also, there surfaced a photo of the walleye’s head after it was prepared for the table. Atop the fish’s head was a ruler that showed the exact dimensions of the head.
Finally, John Oliver, historian for Trousdale County, Tenn., enlarged to life-size a photo of Mrs. Harper holding the fish. Mrs. Mabry’s dimensions were known. The fish she holds in the photo is exactly 41 inches long.
Eventually, the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame conducted an independent investigation. It concluded that sufficient evidence did not exist to overturn Harper’s record and reinstated it.
Sadly for us, Harper’s reinstatement ousted Nelson’s Greers Ferry walleye. Nelson’s fish was long a point of pride for the Natural State, by itself and also for the fact that it gave Greers Ferry three all-tackle world records. The other two were a 40-pound, 4-ounce brown trout caught in 1992 by Howard “Rip” Collins and a 27-pound, 5-ounce white bass/striped bass hybrid caught in 1997 by Jerry Shaum.
The brown trout record stood for about 20 years but has been broken twice in the last 15 years. Only Shaum’s hybrid record still stands.
Coincidentally, I featured Shaum’s hybrid in 1997 for Outdoor Life, the same publication that caused Harper’s record to be purged. We conducted the interview in Shaum’s living room Dec. 28, 1997. Afterward, we watched LSU whip Notre Dame in the Independence Bowl.
Interestingly, Shaum’s taxidermist only finished the fish’s display side. The wall-facing side was unfinished.
Notably, the International Game Fish Association never renounced Harper’s record. The IGFA avoided the controversy after a similar debacle involving the world-record smallmouth bass.
At about the same time, the late Doug Hannon, the ultimate self-promoter in the fishing industry, led an unsuccessful effort to disqualify Perry’s world-record largemouth bass in Field & Stream. For all of Hannon’s logical faults, he made the best spinning reel ever manufactured. WaveSpin is the brand. We bought as many as we could afford when Hannon died.