The Largest Striped Bass Ever Caught Was 82 Pounds And From The Long Island Sound

We don't do a ton of Striped Bass related content around Barstool Chicago and that's for good reason: it's predominantly indigenous to the North American Atlantic Coast. End of the day it just comes down to a numbers game and the data says Striped Bass isn't migrating down the Hudson into my backyard any time soon. Guess that means more Asian Carp for me. 

Even so, I'd be remiss not to give the Striped Bass my upmost (utmost?) respect. At 20-40 pounds and with an average lifespan of 30+ years, you're talking about premium girth and durability. Experts credit that with its anadromous migration pattern, which presents similar yet lesser known struggles to the Pacific Northwest Salmon. This disappointing divide represents the ever present chasm of American wildlife relationships from east to west coast but I digress. 

Point is the Striped Bass is an arguably underrated fish that caught my attention last week while on the water with Chaps. It took him about 20 minutes to reel in the biggest Striped Bass of my life at 48 pounds:

Our guy Rick in the boat could hardly lift him up. That's how fucking big 48 pounds of striped bass is. The video game character threw his back out trying to display our achievement. 

It was such a big accomplishment in the moment that I couldn't help myself from comparing it to actual, real-life striped bass records. Stupid on my part because turns out 48 pounds is absolutely nothing in the world of angling big ass striped bass. From Wikipedia:

The largest striped bass ever taken by angling was an 81.88-lb (37.14-kg) specimen taken from a boat in Long Island Sound, near the Outer Southwest Reef, off the coast of Westbrook, Connecticut. The all-tackle world record fish was taken by Gregory Myerson[20] on the night of August 4, 2011.

Wonder what 82 pounds of Striped Bass looks like? I got you

Absolute fucking moose from my guy Greg who is allegedly well known in the angling community as one of the world's top stripers. Nearly 10 years later and the record still holds. Good for Greg. 

As for me - I'll be on twitch with Chaps in a little bit (10am central) hunting more Striped Bass and talking shop with the boys. You're invited to join us provided you like having a good time on the water. That's all we ask.