Angler fishing for catfish reels in surprising catch – and a Missouri state record
A Missouri angler nearly released a record-breaking catch until his friend told him to take a closer look.
It turned out be a “rare feat,” officials said.
It was still dark when Carlin Allison went fishing July 26 on the Current River in southern Missouri and a creature on the end of his line “put up one heck of a fight,” the Doniphan resident told the Missouri Department of Conservation.
“I was using skipjack bait, and originally thought I was pulling in a catfish,” Allison said.
When he finally pulled in the line, a huge eel was on the other end. Allison was getting ready to cut the line when his friend stopped him.
“I didn’t know what to do with it, but my buddy stopped me and said, ‘Hey, that’s a big eel, hold on!’,” Allison said. “Sure enough, we looked it up online and it was obvious it was bigger than what was listed.”
The American eel caught by Allison was 6 pounds, 15 ounces — smashing the state record of 4 pounds, 8 ounces caught on the Meramec River in 1993, officials said. It’s considered an “uncommon catch” by the state, occurring only occasionally on large streams.
“I knew we had eel in Missouri, but never that big,” Allison said.
Every eel in Missouri is female because male eels live in coastal estuaries, officials said. A female eel lives most her life in freshwater. Eels migrate to the Sargasso Sea region of the Atlantic Ocean, south of Bermuda, for breeding.
“Missouri’s eel population lives mainly in deep pools around cover, such as logs and boulders, in moderate-to-large Missouri streams and rivers,” officials said in a news release. “The state’s eel population has been reduced by large dams, which restrict its ability to migrate.”
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