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Sports - Outdoors

Tuesday, May. 12, 2009

He caught 3 monsters

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Chong Yang, a 5-foot-4, 160-pound man from Fresno, had but one option when hooking into a Millerton Lake-record striper a week ago: "Hold on for dear life."

In a fantasy-like series of fish stories — only these are true — Yang landed the 61.8-pound, 50½-inch fish off shore after catching 41.6- and 49-pounders out of Millerton and the O'Neill Forebay at the San Luis Reservoir in the previous month.

The biggest of the lunkers broke the Millerton Lake striper record of 50.3 pounds by Roger George in 1998. And it made a run at the world freshwater record of 67.8 pounds, from San Luis.

Suddenly a master of monsters, Yang had no doubt what was on the other end of the line: "I knew in the first minute and a half. You have a gut feeling, and my gut said it has to be."