Story 1st reported by the news-leader.com. He calls it his “second chance fish.”
While fishing on the James River several weeks ago, Nixa angler Jay Heselton hooked a sucker fish on his fly rod and didn’t think much about it at the time.
But on Tuesday, he cast his hand-tied crawdad fly into a stretch of the James River a mile below the Delaware access, and all heck broke loose. It wasn’t a smallmouth bass that bent his fly rod.
“This guy, when he felt the hook he jumped out of the water like a bass, but I recognized it as a sucker, like the one I caught before,” Heselton recalled. “It took off on a run that left a rooster tail from my line.”
Fishing from a kayak, Heselton managed to get to shore, where he landed the powerful fish.
“It was beautiful iridescent gold in the sun,” he said.
A guy at the boat ramp who gigs suckers said he knew what it was — a redhorse sucker.
“It weighed 5 pounds, 15 ounces when I had it weighed at Harter House,” Heselton said. “The state record for a redhorse is 5 pounds, 10 ounces.”
Suspecting he might have broken the record, he took the fish to Shepherd of the Hills Hatchery in Branson.”A friend there looked at it and said he didn’t think this was a redhorse, he thought it was a black redhorse. When I learned the current black redhorse record is 1 pound, 8 ounces, it about blew me away!”
MDC fish biologist Dave Woods examined Heselton’s fish and confirmed it was indeed a black redhorse that likely will shatter the Missouri pole-and-line record once it’s officially confirmed.
He also said the fish likely will demolish the International Game Fish Association world record for a black redhorse.
The current world record fish is a 2 pound, 4 ounce black redhorse caught by pole in Pennsylvania in 1998.
GFA will need to review paperwork for Heselton’s fish before it can be declared a world record.
“It’s certainly a unique catch, the fact he caught it on a fly rod and that he tied his own fly,” Woods said.
That he caught a black redhorse on a fishing pole is unusual in itself, Woods noted. Typically, black redhorse suckers are gigged from a boat. They are the most common species of sucker fish in the James River.
Woods said the alternative-method record for a black redhorse is a 9 pound, 13 ounce fish gigged in the Current River in 2008.
“That’s the most common way suckers are taken, by gigging,” Woods said.
As for Heselton, his big black redhorse is still in the freezer, awaiting official confirmation of its record status.
He won’t have the fish mounted and hung on a wall. He said he’s satisfied with having a photograph of the fish mounted in a frame.
“I fish for smallmouth bass, goggle-eye and bluegills,” he said. “It’s pretty weird to catch a sucker on a fly rod.”