Here’s one for you!
Back in 1983 there was a grocery store on the corner of W Bear Lake and M-72 called, The Coach’s Corner Lake Stop which at that time was holding a contest for catching the biggest fish and the biggest trout, from Bear Lake or Cub Lake. This was the first time my wife and I took our daughter Tracy with us fishing. She was 11 years old and still to this day, won’t let me forget what happened. She told us she was going to catch the biggest fish ever. After about 15 minutes she caught and 18 inch Brown, mind you I have six poles setup, 2 for my wife, two for my daughter and two for me. She was the only one getting nibbles, then about 10 minutes later this big Brown 27-1/2 inches 9lbs 1oz. hit her small pole. She pulled so hard on it, the pole came apart, and by this time the fish came out of the water about two feet in the air and my mouth dropped, she was holding the spindle and winding line in as fast as she could, and I was holding the top part of the pole. I dropped the pole and grabbed the net and with one scoop I had it in the net we got it in the pontoon and I really didn’t know what to do with it because this was the biggest fish I’ve seen in all my years of fishing on this lake and that’s 20 years. So I decided to put it in a 5 gallon bucket and that didn’t go to well so I put two 5 gallon buckets together with fish between them and pulled up anchor and headed to shore. I showed it to a neighbor and he told me to put it on ice and get it mounted. But before I did that, the next day we took it to The Coach’s Corner Lake Stop for the contest and won. She received a trophy and $14.00 to spend on anything in the store. Which I thought was great. I called the DNR and they told me to register it with the state. So I did. She received a anglers patch from the State and was entered in the record book. But because of Houghton Lake being an inland Lake which holds mostly all the records hers wasn’t the largest. She was also in a write up in Michigan out Doors.
Mike Sakuta