I saw this in my local paper and wanted to share it.


Lone Star News Group

The man who first saw the Lake Mineral Wells monster floating in the swimming area Wednesday afternoon reportedly thought it was a body at first and ran over to help, according to the story going around among the state park’s employees.

But the big fish tale got bigger when the man stumbled across the 5-foot long fish belly up in the water, far bigger than any fish on record that has come out of the lake.

“I’ve been fishing all my life and never seen anything like that,” Edward Dollins, an employee at the state park, said Wednesday afternoon of the fish, exactly 60 inches long with a girth of 37 inches. The scales were not working Wednesday but they estimated the fish weighed around 80 pounds.

The largest catch on record at Lake Mineral Wells is a 54 pound, 51-inch long catfish caught by Aarron Hagan last summer. Because fish found Wednesday was not caught live, it will not be an official state park record.

When the fish experts at the park were unable to identify it, they called the Possum Kingdom Fish Hatchery.

Experts at the fish hatchery believe the fish is a bighead carp, a species introduced to the U.S. from Asia and not native to the area.

It’s anybody’s guess how the bighead carp got in the lake and why it died.

Word of the strange fish spread around Mineral Wells Wednesday evening and Thursday morning and Dollins said they have had quite a few calls wanting to know more.

The largest bighead carp reported caught at a Texas lake was a 55-inch long, 90-pounder reeled in at Lake Kirby near Abilene in 2000.

According to news reports, the largest bighead to be landed by a fisherman in the Western Hemisphere was a 92 pound, 62-inch long bighead carp caught by a bowfisher in Illinois last year.

A spokesperson at the fish hatchery on Possum Kingdom Lake said bighead carp is a filter feeder that was introduced in the U.S. to help control phytoplankton and competes with minnows and other fish.

The northern parts of the U.S. have had a problem with the fish, considering a destructive invasive species, but it is not often found locally.

Her is the picture that goes with it.

that thing is huge

imagine hooking onto that baby, woohoo i am going to disneyland

hey bikeman how did it go at weatherford this morning

Im sure it went great, its a shame I wasnt there! LOL My Buddy called me at 6 am and said his wife was having labor pains. So I slept in. I had his boat and could have gone but was just too tired. I will go catfishing tonight if I make it to town to get bait.

well I am going to sweet talk wify and see if I can make it out tonight, if so I have all the bait we will need, will let you know later when she gets back.

Ok Call me if you can. I have Church in the morning, so will need to quit early (1 am or so)

will do

I should probably check with my wife also. At some point she is going to start getting mad about me fishing everyday.

lol, i fished that lake about a month ago too...
what if...

I am just glad its dead! If I would have caught it would have killed it!

Are these the ones that jump ?

this one was a big head, slivers I think are the ones known for jumping....either way they are no friend of the carp angler, when ever you hear about carp on the news these are the ones they are talking about and the general populist doesn't distinguish between common carp, big head carp, sliver carp....they just hear carp are bad and it leaves us with even more of an up hill battle we need to separate our selfs from these fish as much as possible.

We should propose for new name for the CC maybe that will take away some the hate.

I think that hooking a bighead would be an accident. They feed on plankton, so they'd have to swim into your popup or floated bait and hook themselves.

I agree with Lonestar with the SILVERS being the jumpers.