Making bucks is the name of that particular game. By now, many of us have built up an immunity to that sort of comparison. However we always seem willing to have our imaginations fired by comparisons of the intangible kind. Those things, living and inate, that may belong to different ages, are many miles apart or, for some other reason, cannot be placed side by side and measured with the same yardstick.
We all know some fish are better performers than others. These variations are allowed for by formulas within the competitive framework of various fishing organisations. However, sets of figures that say all fish are not equal do contain some degree of guesswork.
Fishermen want to know what is biggest, which is fastest, which is the most difficult to hook and so on. Most of all, they want to identify the one that is toughest to land. As for river and lake fish, anglers worldwide are not so unanimous — mainly because the great freshwater fish of the world have not been fully catalogued. Few anglers anywhere can boast more than a handful of eligible species.
These things are now changing. The International Game Fish Association has expanded its scope to include data and record keeping responsibilities for freshwater gamefish. This important work has covered a lot of new ground in recent times. Barramundi are one of the newer additions to the IGFA species list. But there are still gaps. When it comes to what is the greatest freshwater gamefish, the sentiments of many anglers lie with the salmon.
These occur as natural sea-run stocks that return to their native northern hemisphere rivers to spawn, populations that have been successfully transplanted into similar habitats in other parts of the world, such as New Zealand, and those managed in put-and-take, land-locked fisheries. There are many species of salmon, some of which grow to pounds. The best of these is said to be the Atlantic salmon.
