There wasn’t much of a bite going for avid angler Bruce Sederberg on January 16, 2013, but the last fish he hooked that day ended up being the world’s largest lake trout ever landed with a pole and line and released through the ice.
Sederberg was ice fishing White Otter Lake, just northwest of Atikokan, Ontario, Canada—as he’s done that time of year every winter since 1983—when the 46-inch goliath engulfed his jig in 58 feet of water. “I had no idea the lake would ever produce a lake trout this large,” says the 57-year-old Duluth, Minnesota, resident.
The moment Sederberg set the hook he knew it was a fish of huge proportions. “I felt the hit, set the hook and… nothing happened. The rod doubled and the line just sat there as if I had hooked a boulder,” he added.
Sederberg was using a 1/2-ounce Super-Glo Perch Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon tipped with a real minnow head. Linking his jig to his 25-inch medium-action Jig-A-Whopper rod and 4000 Shimano Symetre spinning reel was 20-pound-test PowerPro superline for main line and a short leader of 10-pound-test fluorocarbon.
While fighting the fish, it regurgitated what looked to be a 3-pound whitefish. “Why it ate my tiny lure I’ll never know,” he says.
Sederberg fought the fish for 45 minutes, with his nephew, Bryan Sederberg, standing by part of the time. “The fish would take out a massive amount of line at a slow, steady pace, then when it would stop and I was able to regain what it stripped,” says Sederberg.
The fish was finally pulled up to what Sederberg calls his “binocular hole” - that’s two side-by-side 7-inch holes he drills with his hand-auger, with the center chipped out. His nephew was able to use a gaff to just nip the fish’s yap under its nose and pull it through the ice. “The fish was so big it made a sucking sound as its belly rubbed the edge,” he claims.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/fis...ease-lake-trout 
Ice Fishing World Record, Angler Releases Huge Lake
