Or I guess, why not length? Does it stem from commercial fishing and selling fish by the pound? So value is established by weight? When I was commercial fishing I know we only cared about weight.

I consider myself a trophy striper guy primarily, and always feel somewhat cheated when a get a real long lanky monster that would weigh 40-50#+ pre-spawn, but is missing the 20 pounds of eggs and fat because it's summer time.

What's bigger? A snakey 27" largemouth that weighs 8-9 pounds, or a 24" fish that weighs 11 pounds? To me the snake is bigger, but the other fish is heavier and would rank higher in my "what I've caught" spreadsheet. I guess the fat chick is also prettier.

I also get frustrated, well I guess not really frustrated, but you know..."fishing frustrated"... catching 7-9# largemouth in the delta that are 24-25"+, with bigger heads, mouths, tails, and more length than alot of these double digit football shaped lake fish I see photos of. I caught an 8#er 2 years ago out of the delta that was just slightly smaller than the 14.5# fish I got last year in terms of length and the head/frame of the fish.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I've only caught 3 double digit largemouth (all out of the delta), but many of my 8 pounders are significantly larger (longer) than your trout fed 11 pounders!!! hahahaa

Would it be better/worse if the "measurement of record" was length? Or mouth diameter? Or???

On the east coast they talk weight with their stripers, but they also talk alot more about length than we do out here, mainly because of the length based slot limits methinks.

I guess I'm not suggesting anyone switch to length, as I track weight and will continue to do so, but I guess I'm more interested in a theoretical discussion around fish measurement.

Marcus

There's a joke about obesity in America here somewhere... :)

Really, I don't know why weight vs. length. In Japan it's all about length. They rate the catch by the number of centimeters. Weight is secondary.

If length were the deal, I think Florida would be way up there in terms of fish size. Pure Florida strain type bass tend to be very long, especially those minnow eaters you always see in Bassmaster from Stick Marsh and Toho. There's only a few lakes in CA that have super duper long bass. Most err on the side of fat.