The Missouri Department of Conservation released details this week on the confirmed state record.
CAMDENTON–Gene Swope, Excelsior Springs, and his grandsons will always remember April 23, 2011, as the day they set a Missouri State fishing record. Fisheries Programs Specialist Andrew Branson shares their excitement, but he has mixed emotions about the monster fish that earned them a place in the record book.
Swope was snagging for paddlefish with grandsons Garron Grass and Justin Swope near the Old Oar House Inn at Lake of the Ozarks when he snagged a 106-pound bighead carp. A 35-minute tussle ensued. When Swope finally brought in the 4-foot, 8-inch fish, it took the combined strength of all three anglers to wrestle it into the boat.
Fisheries Management Biologist Tory Mason verified the fish’s weight on a scale at the Lawson Agri-Services. The catch easily eclipsed Missouri’s previous record of 80 pounds for a bighead carp caught through snagging or other “alternative methods.”
Branson, who administers the state fishing records program for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), said the bighead carp is classified as a nongame fish. Snagging is a legal method for taking nongame fish in Missouri, but it is not a method allowed under the rules of the International Game Fish Association. Consequently, Swope’s fish does not qualify as a world record, even though it outweighs the existing record by 16 pounds.
According to Branson, bighead carp are not known to spawn successfully in lakes or ponds. They need current to suspend their eggs in the water during development. The fact that anglers are not catching any young bighead carp at Lake of the Ozarks is a good sign.
“Bighead carp are an invasive Asian species,” said Branson. “This is an example of how invasive species can thrive outside of their native environment, and the importance of preventing their spread. At least anglers are removing some of these from the lake, and that’s good news.
by Jim Low, Missouri Department of Conservation.
