Story by Ken Duke
Ninety-three years ago, on this day (June 2, 1932), a 20-year-old sharecropper from Georgia named George Washington Perry claimed to have caught a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth bass from Montgomery Lake in Telfair County. A couple of years later, it was recognized as the world record by the principal record-keeping organization of the day, Field & Stream magazine.
Nearly a century as the standard bearer of the most celebrated species in all sportfishing carries some heft, but in recent years Perry’s claim to the title has suffered some dents and dings, and I’m proud to have delivered many of them. One day, I hope to make the full assault on his claim and have him stricken from the record books. It’s the fate I’m confident he deserves.
Here are just five reasons why I believe Perry’s record should be disqualified.
1. The story doesn’t “ring true.”
According to lore and contemporaneous quotes attributed to Perry, he and a friend—Jack Page—decided to go fishing because recent rains had made the fields too wet to work and they wanted to put some food on the table.
Perry’s father had died the year before, making him the man of the house that included his mother and several siblings. It was the height—or depth—of the Great Depression, and times were hard.
They took Page’s truck and drove to Montgomery Lake, an oxbow of the Ocmulgee River. There, they launched a plywood boat that Perry may have made for such occasions. For gear, all they had was one rod and reel and one lure—a Creek Chub Fintail Shiner. They took turns fishing and sculling the boat.
That’s the story, but it’s full of holes.
Who—in 1932, in the Depression—fishes with just one lure? If food was the goal, why weren’t they both fishing? Why weren’t they using live bait? Why weren’t they targeting bluegill or crappie or catfish? And if they were out to enjoy some fishing just for fun, why not admit that … but who would do that under those circumstances?
2. Perry had a motive to lie.
The world record bass was not a big deal in 1932, but if anyone bothered to check they would have seen that it weighed 24 pounds and came from the Tombigbee River in Alabama. It was only after Perry’s claimed catch that the Alabama fish was exposed as a fraud. So, Perry would have had no idea that he was potentially rewriting the record book with a 22-04.
His motive would not have been a world record. His motive would have been to win the 22nd annual Field & Stream Fishing Contest. That year, the contest awarded $100 in outdoor equipment. In today’s dollars, that’s about $2,500. That must have looked like riches to a young sharecropper in rural Georgia during the toughest economic times our country has ever faced. Would it have been an incentive to cheat? Of course it would.
And such cheating would have been made easier by the fact that no photo of the fish was required.
3. Georgia doesn’t produce bass that size.
Did you know that the second largest bass ever certified out of the State of Georgia is an 18-pound, 1-ounce fish taken in 1987? In nearly a century, no Georgia bass has come within four pounds of Perry’s claimed weight.
I’d ask you to show me another state where there’s such a chasm between the record and the number two fish, but there is none … and I think we know why. Perry’s claim is fraudulent. The 1987 bass should be the state record.
4. Perry’s fish could not have been a largemouth bass (Micropterus nigricans).
Recently, the world of bass biology has undergone some changes that have impacted the world records. In a nutshell, the Florida Bass—long deemed a subspecies of the Largemouth Bass—is now its own species. Even the scientific names have changed to reflect this development. The Largemouth Bass used to be Micropterus salmoides and the Florida was M. salmoides floridanus.
No more! Now the Florida Bass is M. salmoides and the Largemouth Bass is M. nigricans. Does it matter when you’re fishing? No. But it does matter in the world of record keeping because no pure Largemouth Bass has ever approached 22-04.
And it’s a near certainty that none ever will. Nevertheless, George Perry’s 22-04 now sits atop the International Game Fish Association’s record book for Largemouth Bass. It’s a record that will never, ever be broken because no Largemouth Bass will attain that size.
But even if you believe in the legitimacy of Perry’s catch, it should not be the world record Largemouth Bass. It should be in the Florida Bass category along with Manabu Kurita’s 22-05 from Japan in 2009. Unfortunately, IGFA is reluctant to make the reclassification because there is no way to test the genetics of Perry’s bass. It’s gone.
More maddening is the fact that Perry’s catch allegedly came from a region known to produce pure Florida Bass. If it existed at all, it was a Florida Bass, not a Largemouth Bass.
By keeping Perry’s claim in the Largemouth Bass category, IGFA has all but guaranteed the record will never fall.
5. Perry was a cheat.
My case against George Perry’s claim to the world record is mostly circumstantial. No one who might have seen that fish is alive today. Perry died in 1974. Jack Page died in 1982. We don’t know who might have witnessed the weighing because Field & Stream reportedly lent the file to an outdoor writer in the 1950s, and it was never returned.
But I have what I believe is irrefutable evidence that Perry lied in 1934, when he entered the Field & Stream contest again, this time with a bass weighing 13 pounds, 14 ounces.
I have a photo of Perry with that fish. I got it from the heirs of the Creek Chub Bait Company in the late 1990s. Perry sent the photo to the company in 1934 hoping to get some free lures. His handwriting—confirmed by his son, George L. Perry—is on the back of the photo and references the claimed weight of the bass.
That photo has appeared in several magazines and online in recent years—mostly with my permission. In it, Perry is crouching several feet behind a tackle box with a bass sitting atop it. He’s so far back that he offers no scale for estimating the size of the fish.
But the fish is atop the tackle box—a Kennedy Kit model—and I obtained an identical model many years ago to get an idea of the size of Perry’s 1934 bass. What I found was revealing … and condemning.
The box is less than 21 inches in length. The bass is significantly shorter than that—maybe 18 inches—and yet Perry claimed it weighed nearly 14 pounds. He won the contest with that fish and collected another $75 worth of prizes. (The prize values had fallen due to the strains of the economy.) This time, we can be certain he didn’t deserve them.
Was he honest in 1932 and a fraud in 1934 … or was he a cheat both times? I’m inclined to believe he was dishonest from the beginning.
Maybe the brutal times drove him to it or maybe he used the brutal times to justify his theft. Either way, it was wrong.
And it’s wrong that he holds the most sought-after record in all of sportfishing.
