Is Louisiana's state-record speckled trout a fraud?

Article in T-P today, Interesting. Parts of article......
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By Todd Masson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

The oldest fish on that list is also the largest. According to Louisiana's official fish records, Leon Mattes boated a 12.38-pound speckled trout in April 1950 while fishing Lake Hermitage. For at least the last couple of decades, anglers have been gunning for that record, with none coming closer than an 11.99-pound fish caught by Kenny Kreeger on Super Bowl Sunday 1999.

But how legitimate is Mattes' fish? There's no doubt that he possessed a really big speckled trout. A sepia-toned picture hanging on the wall at Gus' Tackle & Net in Slidell shows Mattes, looking resplendent in dress shirt and tie, holding a fish that would practically have to be carried in an armor-plated ice chest and protected by gun-toting guards today.

It's a lunker to be sure, but how did Mattes acquire it? Some experts are raising doubts about Louisiana's most-hallowed record fish.

Jerald Horst worked for 30 years for Louisiana State University, retiring in 2006 as a full professor of fisheries. Early in Horst's career, the main thrust of the LSU Sea Grant program was to study and benefit Louisiana's commercial fisheries, but Horst was an avid angler who sought to include the recreational community in the organization's research work. Back then, social clubs were a big deal, and Horst tried to attend as many fishing-related get-togethers as possible. He vividly remembers a conversation he had with a man in his 70s at a New Orleans Sportsmen's League meeting.

"I mentioned how odd it was that the state-record (speckled trout) was caught where it was. There were a few trout there back then, but just little ones," Horst recounted. "He laughed and growled. He said, 'Well, you don't know the story of that fish? It's not really a record. It was done as a joke. Mattes went to Florida and bought a gill-net fish while he was there.'"

Horst had heard other chatter about the illegitimacy of the catch, but no one paid much attention to it. It was a different world back then, he said. Anglers didn't have the big-fish mentality that they do in today's era of selfies and social media and online fish porn. No one sought to research Mattes' catch because it was more a novelty than anything else.

The state's fish records are today maintained by the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association, and entries go through a rigorous protocol that includes positive identification by a trained and certified fisheries biologist. That wasn't the case in 1950 when Mattes presented his trophy speckled trout, according to Horst.

"The state-records list was not a formally organized program," he said. "It really kind of grew out of the Louisiana bass records kept by Bob Scearce, the Old Beachcomber, one of the early outdoors pioneers out of Baton Rouge."

After Horst's conversation with the fishing veteran at the New Orleans Sportsmen's League meeting, he heard more and more talk, particularly among biologists, that Mattes fish had been caught with a gill net in Florida and transported back to Louisiana as a joke that got out of hand. Years later, Horst finally confirmed it in his own mind.

"The first time I saw the picture, I looked at the fish and immediately recognized the net marks --?? immediately," he said. "They were transparently obvious."

Horst said that in his years of conducting fish sampling using nets, he learned how speckled trout behave when encountering gill or trammel nets.

"Fish don't just neatly swim up, stick their heads into a set of meshes and hang around, waiting to be caught," he said. "They proceed to try to force themselves through the meshes. They thrash, and they twist. That makes multiple marks on their bodies."

That's especially true, Horst said, of torpedo-shaped fish like speckled trout. Steeper-bodied fish like sheepshead and black drum can get caught near the gills without the net having the elasticity to stretch over their tall bodies. Once a speck hits a net, however, it does its best to swim through it, often causing the mesh to move down its body to the widest girth.

Horst also said that on soft-fleshed fish like speckled trout, pronounced net rings are much more obvious.

Those marks on Mattes' fish are undeniable, according to Pete Gerica, president of the Lake Pontchartrain Commercial Fisherman's Association and chairman of the state's crab task force. Until gill nets were banned in 1995, Gerica, 63, spent his teen-aged and adult life setting nets and harvesting thousands of speckled trout to sell to seafood markets and manufacturers across South Louisiana.

He knows what a net-caught fish looks like, and after viewing a cropped, blown-up photo of Mattes' fish, he said there's no doubt how it met its demise.

"Unmistakably, that fish was caught in a net," he said.

There are a number of factors that make it obvious, Gerica said. The first is a noticeable constriction in the middle of the fish with a clear line running from the back to the belly.

"You wouldn't get that crease in the belly any other way," Gerica said. "I always used nets to size fish, and that's what happens when you've got a larger net. The fish goes through, past the gills, and you'll get a (line) shadow."

Gerica said there are also line shadows on the gill plate and closer to the fish's tail that are typical of net-caught fish.

"You've got that grayish-looking color, and then you've got the regular-looking color of a speckled trout toward the (tail)," Gerica said. "That's where he went through the webbing.

"The constriction could have been made by any number of other items, like rubber bands, plastic bands, wire, etc.," he said.

Horst feels the evidence in the photo alone is enough to discredit Mattes' record speckled trout, but even more damning to its legitimacy is the location where Mattes alleged to have caught it.

For Louisiana's speckled trout anglers, that means the state's holy grail may be just a bit more attainable.