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| Moderated by: g097103 | Page:   1 2 |
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Lady Cop Pioneer100© Member 
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Bush Sr. staying down here at Cheeca Lodge...a favorite presidential fishing retreat~~it is gorgeous! fish the flats or backcountry or head out to the gulf stream or islamorada hump for big game~~this is one huge tarpon!  Andy Mill/Florida Keys News Agency President Bush displays his mammoth tarpon haul in the Florida Keys. Former President George H. W. Bush caught a mammoth tarpon Saturday while fishing off the Florida Keys near Islamorada, Fla., according to the Florida Keys News Agency. Bush chose to release the giant with an estimated weight of around 135 pounds -- the largest tarpon the 84-year-old ex-president has ever caught, the agency reported. The boat on which he was fishing had a legal harvest tag. In place of the fishing trophy, a fiberglass reproduction mount will be commissioned to hang in the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University. Bush, accompanied by former Olympic skiier Andy Mill, wrapped up a weekend angling trip to the Keys Sunday, the agency reported.
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Lady Cop Pioneer100© Member
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HI G!... HAPPY 4TH! It's a whale of a story - about a swordfish  Richard W. Upson Jr., far right, stands with family behind the 550-pound swordfish he caught off Monomoy Island July 4, 1958, by corralling it onto the beach with his 12-foot skiff. Upson’s grandchildren plan to commemorate the event at today’s parade in Chatham.File Photo July 04, 2008 CHATHAM — A 50-year-old fish story will get its due today in the Chatham Fourth of July parade. Seven of Richard W. Upson Jr.'s grandchildren, ages 22 to 37, will pull a wooden cut-out of a swordfish behind an old-fashioned wooden skiff to commemorate his bare-handed corralling of a 550-pound swordfish off Monomoy Island on July 4, 1958. Their grandfather was out in his 12-foot skiff with his wife, brother-in-law and four children when they noticed a large fish thrashing around in the receding tide, according to a July 5, 1958 account in the Cape Cod Standard Times. The patriarch apparently knew a valuable prize when he saw it, and used his boat to scare the fish onto the beach. He then jumped out and "aided its demise with a few lusty whacks with an oar," according to the paper's story. The family then towed the fish, which was only a few inches shorter than the boat itself, to a business known as Bud Henderson's Monomoy Shellfish on Bridge Street. Word of the unusual fish story had somehow already reached shore by the time the Upson party arrived, and waiting at the pier was a crowd of onlookers, including a Cape Cod Standard Times reporter and several restaurant owners anxious for a fresh catch, said Seth Upson. The story became somewhat of a family legend over the years, he said. The family, who lived in Longmeadow and had a summer home on Harding Lane in Chatham, saved some of the meat from the ill-fated swordfish for their own use, but sold most of it to the restaurant owners, Seth Upson said. Richard W. Upson passed away several years ago, but his wife, Marjorie Upson, will be cheering the grandchildren on this morning, he said. The family is scattered around the Northeast, but reunites every Fourth of July at the same cottage on Harding Lane that has been in the family since the 1930s, Seth Upson said.
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Lady Cop Pioneer100© Member
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 AP April 2008: American biologist Zeb Hogan posing with a giant stingray in the Mekong River. SAMUT SONGKRAM, Thailand — Rushing across a temple parking lot, British angler Rick Humphreys yells, "We've got a fish." He jumps into a small motorboat on the Maeklong River in time to see Wirat Moungnum bring the prize to the surface — a rare, giant freshwater stingray that weighs as much as 44 pounds. It bursts through the murky water exposing a soft, white underbelly the size of a trash can lid. The crew scrambles to string a rope through its gill-like slits and wrap a towel around its 5-foot-long tail that has a venomous barb. "It's a start," Humphreys says almost apologetically. The specimen is a tenth of the size of the largest rays. "There are a lot bigger ones than that." Humphreys is serving as a guide for American biologist Zeb Hogan, who is on a worldwide quest for the largest freshwater fish. • Click here to view photos. Hogan, 34, has heard the stories of Cambodian fishermen catching rays that weighed over 1,100 pounds with wingspans of 14 feet. But so far, they are just stories. If he can confirm them, he could eclipse the world record now held by the Mekong giant catfish. "It could be the largest fish in the world and we know next to nothing about it," Hogan says. "I've spent five years on the Mekong looking for rays and only saw two or three. They were nowhere near the size I'd heard about." Hogan's quest is part of the Megafishes project financed by the National Geographic Society. The three-year project, which started in 2006, aims to document and protect freshwater giants that weigh at least 200 pounds or measure 6 feet long. The project will take Hogan to 14 freshwater systems on six continents, including the Mekong, Nile, Mississippi and Amazon rivers. Time is running out for many of the species. The Chinese paddle fish and the dog-eating catfish in Southeast Asia are on the brink of extinction because of pollution, overfishing and dam building. In the Yangtze, where the Three Gorges Dam is a serious threat, Chinese paddle fish haven't been caught since 2003. "Of the two dozen or so species of giant fish, about 70 percent are threatened with extinction," says Hogan, an assistant research professor at the University of Nevada-Reno. Hogan dresses like a tourist with a baseball cap and shorts and has the boyish enthusiasm of an explorer. He spends much of the year searching for these large fish. So far, he has focused mostly on Asia, where he once traveled 36 hours by road to catch the taimen in Mongolia. He just returned from Bhutan, where he scoured the river canyons for mahseer, which can only be caught by the country's monarch. Hogan said he was drawn to the freshwater ray, known scientifically as Himantura chaophraya, because so little is known about it. Listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it is believed to be found in rivers from Thailand to northern Australia. Scientists only discovered it 18 years ago, and its population is unknown. "I have so many questions about this stingray," Hogan says. "Is it truly a freshwater species? Where does it breed? What are its migratory patterns?" Hogan spent the past few years on the Mekong in a futile effort to catch rays, because the nets of Cambodian fishermen were no match for them. Rays also are nearly impossible to spot, since they spend much of their time scrounging for small fish, shrimp, crabs and mollusks that live on the bottom of these muddy rivers. A few months ago, Hogan got wind of big rays being caught and released by Humphreys' company FishSiam in Thailand. Unlike the Cambodian fishermen, FishSiam uses modern rods and reels used to catch other big game fish. At first he was skeptical, then excited. Humphreys seems an unlikely partner in Hogan's quest. With his beady eyes and bald head, Hogan looks the part of bouncer, and his thick Cockney accent can be hard to understand. He has no scientific training. But he knows how to fish, and his team's success in catching stingrays is almost unmatched in Thailand. Just in the past year, Humphreys and his partner, Wuttichai Khuensuwan, have caught 40 rays on the Ban Pakong and Maeklong Rivers, the largest weighing in at 485 pounds. Humphreys, who got his start catching carp in West London gravel pits, says he prefers stingrays because of their fight. They routinely break fishing lines, he says, and one took 15 of his men about six hours to bring to the surface. "Their strength is legendary," he says. "When you see them in the flesh, it is quite humbling." Catching a ray can be dangerous, he says, especially before its tail has been neutralized. "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray barb in 2006, and a Florida man was critically injured that same year when struck in the chest by a ray's barb. Wuttichai Kuachareonsri, a member of Humphreys' crew, stopped fishing for a year after he was stung in the leg by a ray barb. "I never have felt pain like that," he says. "It really frightened me." On his fishing trip with Hogan, Humphreys boasts about "monsters" below the tranquil river and insists it is a matter of time before his team lands a world record ray. The anglers head to the Ban Pakong and Maeklong rivers just two hours outside Bangkok, winding their way past office towers, Buddhist temples and busy highways. Fish farming pens dot the riverbanks and sounds of construction and puttering boats echo across the water. Both spots have given up rays in the past. But on the their first day on the Ban Pakong, the fishermen come up empty. Humphreys blames the heavy rains that have swollen the river. The next day, they have better luck on the Maeklong. The rod bends almost into the water, and Wirat struggles for almost a half hour as the ray dives under the boat and across the bow. It finally is brought to the surface, revealing its big bulging eyes and dark, coarse skin. Its tail alone is 12 feet long. Hogan says catching such a big ray so close to a big city is a sign the species is thriving despite pollution. He is awaiting government permission to launch a two-year study to catch and tag 20 or 30 more rays to better understand their movements. With that data, Hogan is hoping to do what he has done for the Mekong giant catfish, once almost fished to extinction. Hogan's work helped establish its endangered status and prompted authorities in Laos and Thailand to limit total catches to four a year. WWF freshwater biologist Chavalit Vidthayanon, who discovered a smaller ray species in Thailand four years ago, agreed more research was needed to better understand the health of the big fish. "We need to know its exact population and habitat so we can work on conservation and find ways to better protect them," he said. For the easygoing Hogan, the research could help end what has become an epic journey to find "the king of the river." "We're getting close to the record and I'm very confident that a fish of record size existed," he says. "The question is whether it still exists."
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a goliath grouper. i used to see these 600-pound babies in the keys all the time, now they're pretty much gone.   An up-close-and-personal view of the goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara). Scientists now report there are actually two species which split when the Pacific and Atlantic oceans separated 3.5 million years ago. The finding should prove vital to conserving this critically endangered fish.
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24HourNut Administrator  Body pillows rock!
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I love your story reports, LC! But I am always torn between admiring the creatures and wondering what they taste like. Must be the Italian in me. 
The best human beings start good new topics and vote on the better posts. |
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