WRMA Delivers Report to Hayward Hall
Oct 20th, 2005 by OutdoorsFIRST
Modified Oct 20th, 2005 at 12:00 AM
On the subject of the Spray 1949 FWFHF All Tackle World Record
“Spray, and most musky fishermen for that matter, were far from jealous about the Lawton musky. They just wanted to be convinced that the muskie was legitimate. It’s not necessarily WHO holds the world record musky title that’s important, rather that the record is accurate.”-Dettloff, John, “Lawton World Record Overturned,” Musky Hunter Magazine
It’s hard to believe that it has been over a decade now since Art Lawton’s 69lb 15 oz former All Tackle World Record came under intense and independent scrutiny by current FWFHF President, Mr. John Dettloff. The fact that Mr. Dettloff was able to collect new and valuable information disqualifying not only this record, but all of the Lawton records, in addition to the Hartman, Hanser and Haver historical records has certainly set a standard for independent and unbiased muskellunge research that the WRMA has striven to follow.It is likewise personally hard to accept that after a year and a half of hard work the World Record Muskie Alliance Report on the current FWFHF All Tackle Muskellunge Record is finally complete.Nonetheless, I am proud to announce that as of today, October 20, 2005, the WRMA report on the Louis Spray 69lb, 11oz record allegedly caught on the historic waters of the Chippewa Flowage on October 20, 1949, has been delivered to the National Freshwater Hall of Fame and Museum, Hayward, Wisconsin.Given the preponderance of scientific and circumstantial evidence to the contrary presented within this report, we at the WRMA are compelled to accept the physical impossibility of the current FWFHF Record to have weighed anywhere near the 69lbs, 11 oz claimed by Spray in 1949. Therefore, it is our recommendation that this and all Spray records be immediately disqualified from current or historic record status or consideration by the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum, as they represent obvious cases of fraud on the part of Spray and his associates.We at the WRMA believe that the burden of establishing adequate proof for this or any angling record must fall squarely on the shoulders of the claimant in order for a record to be valid. By this test, the Spray fish not only fail, but fail miserably.It is abundantly clear that this same burden of proof was borne by the Lawton, Hartman, Hanser and Haver records when the FWFHF ruled on the basis of Mr. Dettloff’s findings to disqualify these claims from record consideration. Furthermore, it is important to note that Ruth Lawton’s 68lb 5oz potential world record candidate was rejected by means of an amateur’s photo analysis alone.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. Nonetheless, it is our hope that by authoring this report we at the WRMA have added to the overall credibility of our beloved sport, and in this spirit humbly submit our findings to the general muskellunge public for consideration, as promised.Please find below an excerpt from the report detailing the WRMA 1940 and 1949 visualization experiments. After the WRMA completed this preliminary work in the summer of 2004, we found ourselves in complete agreement that reasonable doubt now existed with regard to the Spray records. In fact, Those interested in reading the entire 95 page WRMA Spray Summary Report may do so by going to the WRMA web site at www.worldrecordmuskiealliance.com.We realize that this report is likely to give rise to a great deal of discussion on this and other forums. For this reason, we will do our best to fully answer on a weekly basis as many legitimate questions about our findings posted by authors willing to share both their first and last names as time will allow. Similarly, we reserve the right to constructively ignore anonymous queries, as so often in the past these have served as an obstacle to sincere debate.Thank you,Rich DelaneyPresident, World Record Muskie Alliance——————————————————————————————————————–Editor’s note:The full text of the WRMA document can be viewed in Adobe Acrobat (6.84 mb) format at:http://muskie.outdoorsfirst.com/pdf/wrma.pdfThe visualization portion (972 kb) can be viewed at:http://muskie.outdoorsfirst.com/pdf/wrmavis.pdf