A fisherman who thought he had found a school of bass on his fish finder got the surprise of his life when he hooked one of the fish that wound up being a record-size crappie.
David Burruss of Clear Lake Outdoors in Lakeport, Calif., made the catch Wednesday while fishing at Clear Lake, known as a premier bass lake. But his black crappie took the spotlight on this day as it weighed 4.33 pounds (or 4 pounds, 5.3 ounces), which would break a 46-year-old California record if confirmed, as reported by the Lake County Record-Bee and Field & Stream.
The current record is 4 pounds, 1 ounce caught by Wilma Honey at New Hogan Lake on March 29, 1975.
“I thought I had hooked a nice bass until I got it up to the boat and saw that it was a giant crappie,” Burruss told the Record-Bee.
He took the fish to Lakeside County Park and called outdoors writer Terry Knight to meet him.
“When I first saw the fish, I was dumbfounded,” the 85-year-old Knight wrote. “I have seen a lot of big crappie in my lifetime but nothing like this one.”
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They weighed the fish on two scales and both gave the digitized weight of 4.33 pounds. A certified scale at a local supermarket confirmed the 4.33-pound weight, which should solidify it as a record. The crappie measured 17.71 inches.
For comparison, the all-tackle world record for a black crappie is 5 pounds, 7 ounces caught in May 2018 at Richeiseon Pond in Tennessee.
Burruss took his fish to the Department of Fish and Wildlife so a biologist could identify the fish and take scale samples, and start the record certification process.
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“It had been a slow day bass fishing, but I saw a few bigger fish on the Garmin Livescope that I thought were maybe bass,” Burruss told Field & Stream. “But these fish were suspended 6 to 10 feet deep in 25 feet of water. They ended up being huge crappies. There were two other crappies with this fish the same size that I couldn’t get to bite.”
If confirmed, Clear Lake would become the owner of state records for both black crappie and white crappie. The white crappie state record of 4 pounds, 8 ounces was caught in 1971.
Burruss plans to have the fish mounted and put it on display in his shop.