Using the fish and game records kept in part by the state and further tracked by publications like The Maine Sportsman, we produced this interactive map of where all of Maine’s biggest fish and game have been caught.
To isolate just a certain kind of game — deer, for instance — just check that box in the legend at the bottom of the map and uncheck all others.
Click on the “Right” arrow just below the bottom righthand corner of the map to find the freshwater and saltwater fish options in the legend, if you can’t see them.
Use the zoom bar on the lefthand side of the map to get closer to a particular area or get more space between fish and game icons.
Also, in some cases, it was unclear where the record fish or game was caught, and in those cases, we just used the champion hunter or angler’s home town to mark the location.
While there are a few trends you can find going through the map, the one that perhaps stands out most is the enormous cluster of record fish caught out of Perkins Cove, Ogunquit. All the photos below out of Perkins Cove were turned in to the Department of Marine Resources by Capt. Tim Tower, a prolific deep sea fisherman in the area who’s apparently a magnet for record catches.
There were so many saltwater fishing records set out of Perkins Cove (at least 11), you’ll notice, that we had to list them all under one icon, otherwise they wouldn’t have all fit on the map.
View the photos below to see some of the biggest saltwater fish caught in Maine waters. The photos are mostly submitted by the fishermen or their guides and distributed by DMR, which posts them here.
- Douglas Dodge, 67-pound striped bass, caught on the Sheepscot River, Sept. 20, 1978.
- Dennis Moran, with a 19.66-pound bluefish caught off Boothbay Harbor on Aug. 8, 1994.
- Neil Downey, with an 80-plus-pound Atlantic cod caught off Perkins Cove on Sept. 8, 1992.
- Kenton Geer, with a 33.42-pound cusk caught off Perkins Cove on Oct. 11, 2002.
- Lisa Boughner, with a flounder weighing more than 4 pounds, caught off Perkins Cove on June 28, 1991.
- Nancy Lee Regimbald, with a nearly 50-pound goosefish caught off Perkins Cove on July 9, 1991.
- Jared Keniston, with a 15.6-pound haddock caught off Perkins Cove on May 11, 2004.
- John Audet, with a 46-plus-pound white hake caught off Perkins Cove on Oct. 26, 1986.
- Richard Hincman, with a 215-pound halibut caught off Boothbay Harbor on Aug. 14, 1965.
- Linda Paul, with a nearly 47-pound pollock caught off Perkins Cove on Oct. 24, 1990.
- Don Carigan, with a 35-plus-pound torpedo ray caught off Perkins Cove on Aug. 24, 1995.
- Wesley Hurst, Jr., with a 548-pound porbeagle shark caught off Bailey Island on July 22, 1995.
- Stephen York, with a 628-pound thresher shark caught off South Portland on Sept. 9, 2006.
- Jerry Jamison of Bath, with an 819-pound bluefin tuna he caught on Aug. 10, 1977.
- Gunther Schultz, with a 30-pound Atlantic wolffish caught off Perkins Cove on Aug. 21, 1990.
- John Shostak, with a 425-pound thresher shark he caught by rod-and-reel on July 14, 1998 off Boothbay Harbor.