It was shortly after midnight, in the earliest moments of June 9, as Brent McGlone’s boat glided across the shallow waters of the expansive arm of Lake Erie that separates the city from the Marblehead peninsula. The fish moving about below had no inkling just who was standing on the diamond plate deck of that craft.
McGlone is a bowfisherman who holds the state record with a sucker he shot on the Maumee River, near Weir Rapids, in 2007. It’s the second time he’s held the record, so clearly his arrows track straight and he knows where to find big fish.
But on this night, McGlone’s friend Patrick Johnson would be the one who had a gargantuan scaly hunk of history in his sights.
The pair were targeting big fish, and in the early summer darkness, this rich estuary called Sandusky Bay was full of them. They had shot a 37-pound common carp earlier that night, and a 46-pound grass carp just 10 minutes before Johnson had a huge common carp appear on his side of the boat.
“We were hoping to shoot something special,” said Johnson, who works for the city of Toledo’s water department. “And it was one of those nights when everything seemed to be clicking.”
As the duo plied the bay, they were acutely aware that Ohio’s record common carp taken by bowfishing had come from those same waters in 2008, a 47.65 pounder shot by Rich Cady. Read more….