World Record Largemouth

News of a possible world record largemouth being caught on July 2 has raised a lot of debate over the meaning of the catch and its legitimacy, and for good reason. With everyone's eyes firmly fixed on California, to see a possible record-sharing bass come out of Japan has not only surprised many but caused a few to wonder at the definitions of a record breaker as well as the possible impact of such news. What is even more surprising is that while the catch has definitely caught our attention its impact has been dulled by its coming from outside the United States. Personally, I think this is less a matter of our own vanity and more a matter of the differences between what sport fishing means to us and what it means to the Japanese. While it is understandable to some to hear of Japan's policy of largemouth bass being an exotic species and therefore illegal to release after capture (carp, native to southeast Asia, is termed a "nuisance" species here in America), this status has to be taken into consideration when thinking of the importance of this recent catch. That the largemouth is an unwanted fish in Japan may immediately cause one to think that a record-breaker is less likely to be found there, making such a catch all the more impressive. In other words, if less fish are released, the less likely they are to reach record size. Yet if this is considered to be true then our loosely termed definition of gamefishing would have to somehow be altered: it would be more "sporting" or challenging for us to keep larger fish and make it harder for record sizes to be caught. Of course, this isn't the case, and most bass anglers would agree that fishing pressure makes catching large bass more of a challenge. Also worth considering is the fact that nuisance or exotic species are not fished for enthusiastically by the public, possibly because they are "bad" gamefish, of little to no food value, or an unwelcome competitor to native species. This last point--what is native and what isn't--is of the utmost importance. Who determines the importance of sustaining native species, and for what reason? We should probably also consider that many of the species we're fishing for in the United States are shared with Canadian anglers, often with far differing success and impacts on sustainability. At any rate, news of record-sized fish opens a pretty complicated discussion.