Fish Tales

What's the biggest fish you ever caught? We asked everyone to send us their biggest catch, and boy, did we get some whoppers!

Here we have Marcus & Millichap's Matt White showing off his 23-inch, 7-pound rainbow trout caught along the Soque River in North Georgia during a trip last year. “Never in my life did I think I could catch a trout even half that size while fly fishing in the State of Georgia,” Matt says. (The trout said: "Never in my life did I think I'd get caught by someone fly fishing in the State of Georgia.")

Last October while in Mexico Beach, Fla. for his brother's wedding, Stream Realty's Kevin Driver spent 30 minutes tussling in the ocean with this monster--a 33-inch redfish. Kevin tells us he caught it on the beach “with no net or assistance.” After Instagramming his capture, Kevin released the fish back into the surf and then showered, changed into his tux and got his brother to take him to the chapel for the wedding—with 15 minutes to spare.

Kevin's redfish may just be the luckiest fish in the whole world. Because it might've been caught again. Here is Dwelldesign Studio's Stephen Moriak with his wife Anne (who he describes as a “superb angler”) on a boat in Destin, Fla. She managed to catch a 37-inch redfish (so Kevin's guy grew a little). Unfortunately the captain of the fishing charter told the couple the fish was too big to keep and they had to throw it back in. “She had just caught the biggest fish of her life and was told she couldn't keep it. Who has ever heard of such a story?”

Northwestern Mutual Real Estate Investments' Rob Francour is seen here showing off a striped bass he caught during a recent fishing outing in Lake Lanier. His guide had just taken Atlanta Falcon's QB Matt Ryan out a few days earlier and noted to Rob how good a tipper he was. As Rob tells us, “the pressure was on.” But after catching 14 stripers, he tipped his boat captain just fine, he says.

Cardno ATC's Tara Lane helped make a Georgia creek into a legend. On the very last day of fishing at Cooper's Creek last fall, Tara tells us she noticed a huge shadow looming in a shade pool in the river. She casted. Nothing. As she prepared to cast again, it jumped out, causing her to shout out something that caught the attention of other fishermen nearby. She didn't give up. Finally, it caught “and boy did it fight. All I could think was my 4-pound test line could easily break, so I was careful to keep the right tension and not hoist it out of the water at the very end.” After netting it, she walked away from the creek to avoid letting it slip away and got a pic with her prize. The nearby fishermen, Tara recalls, said, “Oh my God! Larry, she wasn't kidding!” And they said it was the biggest trout they'd ever seen caught in Cooper's Creek. “One day, when I'm old and gray, this fish will hang on my wall in a nursing home, and the staff will say, 'Ms. Lane, tell us about that trout on your wall.'”