Published: Friday, December 02, 2005
There was pics in this mornings paper but not online.
A Canadian crime-scene expert has applied his skills to one of the fishing world's most famous and controversial photographs -- a 56-year-old snapshot that shows legendary Wisconsin angler Louis Spray proudly displaying a monster muskie that still holds the record as the biggest ever caught.
Toronto forensics specialist Dan Mills' "photogrammetric" analysis of "Chin-Whiskered Charlie" -- the purported 69-pounder that catapulted Spray to sportfishing stardom -- has exposed it as a probable fraud, prompting an investigation by the U.S.-based Fishing Hall of Fame that could push a Canadian and his 65-pound, Georgian Bay muskellunge a notch closer to angling immortality.
The study has caused an uproar in the proud, piscatory subculture that casts muskie fishing as a kind of mythic quest. Accusations of rank jealousy and anti-Wisconsin intrigue have been hurled at the Illinois-based World Record Muskie Alliance, which sponsored the scientific study of the fish Mr. Spray landed in 1949 (using a rod, reel and rifle) on a lake 500 kilometres northwest of Milwaukee.
Skepticism has surrounded Mr. Spray's claim for decades. But 10 years ago -- after an alleged 69-pound, 15-ounce muskie caught by a New Yorker on the St. Lawrence River in 1957 was ruled a hoax -- Mr. Spray and Chin-Whiskered Charlie took their place as No. 1 in the world.
Then, as the spotlight turned to the Wisconsin catch, lingering doubts grew large among some in the muskie community. Pictures taken in 1949 appeared to show a fish too short and slender to have reached such a tremendous weight.
And stories began circulating that suggested Mr. Spray might have filled his fish with wet sand to boost its prize-winning poundage.
Mr. Spray's taxidermied mount of the '49 fish -- oddly and obviously enhanced from the original -- had been destroyed in a fire. The angler himself was long gone, dead by suicide in 1984. And the rules governing record claims in the mid-20th century were notoriously loose.
So, the muskie alliance supplied vintage photos of the suspect fish to Mr. Mills, a professional surveyor and former Transport Canada investigator who uses physics and various computer measurement technologies to reconstruct traffic accidents, trace bullet trajectories and discern the height of suspected criminals from video surveillance cameras.
"This was definitely my first fish," says Mr. Mills. "It was a unique application of the science I use, but I tackled it the same way I would with any other evidence."
His findings: the muskie Mr. Spray said was 63 inches in length couldn't have been more than 55 inches from snout to tail; and its reported girth of 31.25 inches was not possible given the maximum 10-inch, single-side width calculated by Mr. Mills.
The Muskie Alliance submitted the results to the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, a muskie-shaped museum in northern Wisconsin.
Presenting Mr. Mills' data to prove the "physical impossibility" of Charlie's supposed dimensions, and denouncing Mr. Spray's claim as "a fraud of historic proportions," the group urged that the record be scrapped and other massive muskies be considered for the title.
The Hall of Fame has agreed to review Mr. Spray's muskie, which could put Toronto angler Ken O'Brien -- who netted his Canadian-record-setting 65-pound fish in 1988 in Georgian Bay's Blackstone Harbour -- in contention for global supremacy.
Mr. O'Brien's giant is currently third in the world muskellunge rankings behind those caught by Mr. Spray and fellow Wisconsin fisherman Cal Johnson, who recorded a 67-pound, 8-ounce muskie just a few months before Mr. Spray's suspect catch in 1949.
But, for many of the same reasons that the Spray muskie raised doubts among U.S. anglers, Mr. Johnson's fish has come under renewed scrutiny.
Mr. Mills said he has already been approached to analyse snapshots of Mr. Johnson with his prize muskie to determine which kind of whopper the photos depict.
"We know that adding Spray's patently false muskellunge records to the already long list of 'Muskie Crimes of the Century' represents yet another historic disillusionment for the entire muskellunge community," the Muskie Alliance says of its campaign to re-test record-setting fish stories. "Just so everyone is crystal clear on this subject -- it has nothing to do with Mr. Spray, Mr. Johnson or Mr. O'Brien. It's only to help authenticate the brass rings of our sport."
