January 10, 2012
By Dylan Polk
A 15-year-old angler has taken down an Illinois' gamefish record that's stood for 50 years.
Rockford, Ill., native Nick Tassoni, 15, reeled in a 14-pound, 12-ounce walleye on the Pecatonica River between Rockford and Shirland, according to the Rockford Register Star .
"I still don't really believe it. I've handled some pretty big fish, but I've never seen anything like that. It was surreal," Nick told reporters. "One thing I'm pretty sure of — I'll never top that. I guess now I'll just go out and fish for fun."
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Nick and his father, Dave, set out at 5:30 a.m. Saturday on their 14-foot Starcraft. The duo nabbed one fish about an hour-and-a-half later, but couldn't get a bite in the next few hours.
"I caught our first fish around 7 in the morning, but then we went five or six hours after that without even a bite. Yeah, Nick was complaining a bit," Dave said. "But I convinced him to take one more troll, and about two minutes later, he was like, 'Dad, I think I've got a fish here. I think I've got a nice fish here.'"
After landing the 31-inch-long fish at about 1 p.m. with the help of Dave's net, the two quickly took the fish to a local grocery store to be weighed, confirming the new record.
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The previous record was set in 1961 when Fred Goselin landed a 14-pounder in 1961 on the Kankakee River. The world all-tackle record for walleye, according the International Game Fish Association , was a 25-pounder caught by Mabry Harper on Aug. 2, 1960, at Old Hickory Lake in Tennessee.