Thread: Oooops! Should have checked first.

Had a client trip Tuesday and the guys wanted to fish for Redears and gills. I spent 4 hours Monday side scanning beds and looking for active beds.

Tuesday we hit the first spot and caught two decent Redears right off the bat. Then came a couple dozen 7-8” gills that the guys didn’t want to keep. We ended up catching a couple of 9”+ gills they kept.

We moved to a couple more stakebeds and one of the guys hooked a better fish. After a quick fight we boated a fish I had no idea what it was! It was some kind of sucker. I never fished streams or creeks that had suckers. I took a couple pics and dropped it back in.

The guys soon decided to pull cranks for crappie. We had a good rest of the trip. When we got back to the resort, I sent a quick text note and a couple of the pics to our state fisheries biologist. I told him about the catch and release.

Almost instantly I got a return text that started with NOOOOOOO! The next line said you just released a new state record Spotted Sucker!

Apparently it is a species that isn’t common to Ky Lake and they grow small in their normal stream habitat. I told the lucky angler and we got a good laugh out of it. I don’t know if being a state record holder in the Spotted Sucker column was a big deal to him.

I caught and gave away a new state record yellow perch on Ky Lake a few years ago. Once I checked the record book and realized my mistake, I called my buddy who had just cleaned it! Oh well, you would think I would have learned my lesson. I’ll check before releasing the next odd-ball catch!


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com

We have a lot of suckers in the Stones River spawning in the spring with the white bass. People used to snag them and use galvanized tubs with the bottom cut out so you can reach in and catch them with their hands. Most people pressure cook them like salmon patties. I caught one a few years ago and cleaned and ate it. It was really good fish but boy was it boney. That is why most pressure cook them. It used to be a big thing, canning suckers in glass jars.