You can bet your bottom dollar that every fisherman and woman has a mind-bending story about “the one that got away” – that unbelievably big fish that would have fed the family for weeks … but for a moment’s bad luck.

The marvellous thing about “the one that got away” stories is that the credibility of the story is inversely proportional to time. From the moment said fish escapes, it grows ever bigger with each recounting of the event, until it is doubtful whether the Atlantic Ocean could hold it.

Unfortunately, the size of  “the one that got away” is difficult to verify – even the Guinness Book of World Records, that catalogue of the bizarre, does not have a category for the biggest fish that got away. It is impossible to verify the facts.
No, the secret of real fishing is to keep the fish on the hook. Once landed and weighed, there can be no dispute about the dimensions of the conquest.

The biggest fish ever caught on a rod and reel was a 700-kilogram black marlin, hooked off the shoreline of Cabo Blanco, Peru, where the Andes plunge into the Pacific. Alfred C. Glassell Junior caught the mighty fish in August 1953. It took Glassell an hour and 45 minutes to land his catch.

Today, keeping the fish on the hook is easier than it ever was. Rapid advances in fishing-gear technology are playing a major role in sport fishing. Rods, reels and everything in between are reaching reliability standards only dreamed of by fishermen of the past.

Inside the latest reels you will find state-of-the-art bearing engineering – some designed in conjunction with SKF – that, in fishing circles, just might help turn “the one that got way” stories into “the one that I caught.”

Still, as years of terrific fishing stories have proved, catching the fish is only half the fun.