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!Attachment 505116Attachment 505117Attachment 505118


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Nice catch. Thanks for sharing the story. Never heard of a spotted sucker. Congrats.

Thanks for posting!!

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Wow never heard of that species as well nor seen anything like it ... good post and pictures

I’ve heard of em but never dealt with em. Good story Doug and a record is a record, no matter the species.

Would've made for a great catfish bait!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by happycaster58

Would've made for a great catfish bait!

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Yeah, that's the kinda stuff we throw in a crab trap.

Never seen one myself Doug! Glad yall had a good outing.

thats pretty darn cool , never seen a spotted sucker before .
I once ketched a thing called a quillback carpsucker myself .
it resembles a smallmouth buffalo pretty much ....
but the mouth is extra tiny and the dorsal spine is extra long and it isn't that bluish grey color ...
more golden as I remember ....imagine back then it was some kind of record due to the rarity of ever seeing one ...
never seen one since ....
except in books and such ....

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.

Years ago my dad caught a flounder that many say would have been a state record. We knew nothing about saltwater fish because we lived in Dallas which is 300 miles from saltwater. We didn't have a ice chest so we took pics and let it go (unheard of in my household). Only after showing pics to a local bait house did we learn how special of fish it was.