About 1960 my grandfather had a small stock tank dug in one small pasture to provide water for his milk cow.
A few years rocked on by and I found some perch in a creek near by. I took off my Tee shirt and used it for a net to trap a few fish in shallow water. I then carried the tiny fish in my wet shirt for a 1/2 mile and dumped them in the small stock tank.
The clock keeps running and it is 1966. Me and my baby brother went fishing in the little stock tank after seeing grasshoppers slaughtered by the fish. We had no luck so we left our fishing lines in the water and went to lunch on a smoking hot day.
After lunch we returned and his rod and reel were gone. Since he was only about 12 and did not swim that well I volunteered to do the search for the rod and reel. I took off my shoes and waded in. I located the rod in the deepest part of the tank and walked it out until he could take it and reel it in. It had a huge perch on the line. It was a little larger than the hand of a large adult male and was about 3/4" thick.
We still talk about that fish more than 50 years later.