Rob Stanley holds up his 46-inch pike, which he caught while fly fishing in Whitefish Lake last week. - Photo courtesy of Rob Stanley.

About an hour into a peaceful afternoon of fishing last week, Rob Stanley was bobbing in a float tube, casting his fly rod into Whitefish Lake when he thought he snagged some weeds.

“That’s when the pike hit and I felt a fish take like I’ve never felt a fish take in my life,” Stanley, 37, said.

Stanley’s silver streamer bit the side of a 46-inch pike’s mouth, and Stanley was in for the ride of his life. For more than an hour, he was pulled around the lake near City Beach while finagling 8-pound test line.

The Whitefish resident didn’t know what he was into — Lake trout? Pike? Sea monster? — but he knew it was big.

“For a long time I didn’t see him. I didn’t know what it was. If he wanted line, I just gave it to him,” he said. “I knew I was going to have to tire him out till he was dead.”

An hour passed, and Stanley was still battling. Fortunately, a couple fellow fishermen in a boat steered over and used a net to heave the great carnivorous creature out of the water.

It weighed in at 25 ½ pounds on the boat’s digital scale. Back in Whitefish, Stanley had the pike weighed again, and it came in officially at 24.7 pounds, which could be a world record for 8-pound test on a fly rod.

Stanley has asked around and so far has heard conflicting reports. One source has said he broke the world record for 8-pound test set in 1992, while another source said the actual record is 27 pounds. He is submitting the catch to the proper authorities and has the fish at a local taxidermy shop.

World record or not, it’s a fish story that won’t be forgotten in the Stanley household.