“That’s probably the biggest carp I’ve ever seen,” said Springboro Police Officer Dale Richter, speculating some local angler has a fish story his friends and family will never believe — one that got away on the road.
“I would just assume someone was late night fishing last night and it probably fell off the back of his truck,” Richter said. “There’s going to be a very unhappy fisherman, somewhere.”
As fish tales go, there is some disagreement over the size of the catch. Richter said he did not measure the fish, but “stepped it off” with his 11-inch boot, and it came close to five feet long.
The fish corpse was first reported shortly before midnight Tuesday by Laurie McCoy, whose son saw it on his way home. But police “obviously thought they were telling a fish story,” said Patricia Caskey, McCoy’s mother.
It could be a record if the fish were a common carp, but it’s not, according to Doug Maloney, fish management supervisor with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Maloney was shown a picture and said the fish is a grass carp, also known as a White Amur.
“They are stocked in ponds in Ohio because they have a fondness for eating underwater plants,” Maloney said. “The mostly likely explanation of where this critter came from, if he was found in southwest Ohio, is he most likely came out of a pond.”
Maloney said the fish can get up to 70 pounds in their native Asia.
“This is a good size one,” he said. “There’s no records kept for this species, because they’re so rarely caught by fishermen”
About the Author
