Agree with Matt here on all points. Thanks Greg for the inside info! Really very much appreciated.

The fish (so far) seems to have been well documented and was caught by a dedicated trophy bass fisherman, not some random barni. This is about all I could ever ask for in a world record catch.

So on average I am very pleased with they circumstances. Bass are no less native to Japan as they are to California, so it seems equally fair for the WR to come from over there.

Live bait? Whatever it takes. I don't personally use it, but if I saw a 22 lber that wouldn't eat artificials I'd probably think about it.

I still haven't decided if I will consider this fish a tie or the new record. On the one hand I have significant doubt about the legitimacy of the first record. On the other hand the new fish appears to be less than one ounce larger, and even that's going by the rather dubious assumption that the old can be said to be 25.25000 lbs. I'm still bothered by various websites rounding up this fish's weight to 5 ounces. Bleh.

Tie or not, if everything checks out this fish will be the new mark to beat. And that's what a record comes down to :)