Only one smallie, a 10-pound 14-ounce fish caught from the same lake in 1969, has ever come close to besting Hayes’s haul. But it reinstated the record after an “intense investigation,” in 2005, which included polygraph tests that found that the affidavit denouncing Hayes’s claim had been falsified. IGFA rescinded the record in 1996, after the organization was made aware of a 40-year-old affidavit that claimed that the fish weighed only 8 pounds. The original world record was bestowed to him in 1955 by none other than Field & Stream, the keeper of freshwater fishing records at the time. Hayes’s epic journey in and out of the record books makes for one of the most storied world-record catches in IGFA history. The World Record Smallmouth Bass - 11 pounds 15 ounces David Hayes was all smiles on July 9, 1955, when he landed this 11-pound, 15-ounce smallie in Dale Hallow Lake, Tennessee. But IGFA-which has the catch’s original documentation-has upheld the world record. In 1996, the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame elected to remove Harper’s catch from the record books, due to persistent questions about its validity.

Harper has his wife, Mary, to thank for making sure that his big walleye was officially weighed before he cleaned it for dinner. The World Record Walleye - 25 pounds Mabry Haper’s 25-pound walleye, caught in 1960, is the biggest in the books.

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