Top 7 IGFA fishing records held by Australians

It should come as no surprise, then, that Aussies hold a number of International Game Fish Association records for the world's largest fish landed across a number of species.

Some of them aren't even recent accomplishments, indicating that a record-setting monster is still out there somewhere, waiting for someone else to come along and claim the title.

And it's not an entire blokefest, either, with a number of female record holders spanning a surprising number of species – ones more commonly associated with social media images showing clusters of grinning men around the catch.

We trawl the IGFA fishing records database to find some of the more exceptional Aussie records that stand out from the crowd.

The IFGA record for gummy shark dates all the way back to November 15, 1992.

Neale Blunden was bottom-fishing at McLoughlins Beach in East Gippsland using 30kg line when he hooked a gummy that would eventually weigh in at 30.8kg and measure 161cm.

The record gummy was caught using pilchards.

Gummy shark are scavengers, preferring to sniff out their food on the bottom. Most fishers target them in deeper water up to about 60 metres, but you can also catch quite good-sized fish in water as shallow as a metre.

Because they feed off the bottom, you want your bait to sit down there. The best rig is a simple running sinker with a 6/0 Octopus hook.

If you’re fishing deeper water, target the flat areas surrounding reefs. If you’re in shallower waters, target the deeper channels with a bit of current. 

Always set a burley trail to attract gummies.

Australia holds a number of records relating to snapper, so the one we’ll concentrate on here is the outright all-tackle length record, which sits at 81.0cm.

This record was set by Dylan Picken in May, 2018. Picken was casting into the water at Dawesville, south of Perth, when he hooked up the record fish using 3.0kg line.

All the previous records for the longest snapper dating back to 2011 were held by New Zealand anglers, so it’s good to be one up against our cousins from across the ditch.

Big barrels are high on many angers’ wish lists, and the biggest so far was caught in july, 2009 off Tathra, southern NSW.

According to the report of the record, a bloke named Phil Body hauled in the 167.5kg southern bluefin, caught on a 37kg line trolled behind the boat.

The fish was almost as round as it was long; 198cm from tip to tail, with a girth of 150cm.

Sports fishing is a big industry in Tathra, which is a short 20km boat trip away from the edge of the continental shelf – prime tuna hunting grounds.

Makos are jumpers. Hook one up and it will put on a spectacular show all the way to the boat, leaping out of the water in a show of brute strength as it fights the line.

Angler Andrew Nasr hooked up a monster mako in late 1995. His catch picked up a skipjack used as drifting bait, and by the time he hauled it in it measured a full 3.0 metres from tip to tail, with a girth of 220cm.

What’s amazing, though, is the weight of his catch; 443.5kg, and caught on 15kg line.

What;s surprising, though, is that this shark was caught offshore from Sydney’s Botany Bay.

The legend of the fabled three-metre lizard remains just that, with the current IGFA record stretching to just 105cm.

Glen Edwards’ record for the largest dusky flathead ever landed has remained undefeated since June, 1997 when he caught a 6.33kg monster using mullet as a live bait, and a handcrafted Butterworth rod blank fitted with 2kg line.

The big croc was caught in Wallis Lake at Forster Tuncurry on the north central NSW coast.

Freshwater fishers treat the humble Australian bass, formerly called perch, as something of a trophy fish.

An Australian native – hence the geographical reference in the name, and a recent reclassification as a distant relative of the Murray cod – fish that are wild-caught are usually small, ranging up to about a kilogram in weight, and between 20-30cm in size.

A bloke named Daniel McCoy was fishing in Queensland’s Lake Somerset in August 2018 when he landed something a little more impressive, a fish measuring 56.5cm.

The report of the catch says it was caught on a lure using a 4.0kg line. Unfortunately, there’s no record of how much this big bass weighed.

Yep, Australia holds a number of world records for black marlin. The one we will concentrate on here, though, is for the heaviest: a 600.1kg monster hauled in by Georgette Douwma all the way back in 1977.

According to the record of the record, Douwma was trolling with scad off the coast at Cairns in ... wait for it ... November 1977 when she hooked up a 600.1kg marlin.

No records exist that can account for the amount of effort it took to land this fish, but it would have been a mighty one. We do know the fish was caught using a 40kg Dacron, a line used specifically for gamefishing.

Douwma's fish measured in at 439.4cm, with a girth of 203.2cm.

Surprisingly, Douwma must have been a bit of a sports fishing gun. She also held an IGFA record for a 17.23kg dogtooth tuna, set in the late 1970s.