Amos gay shellcracker
With all the hue and cry about Asian carp and a few stories in the news recently about zebra mussels contributing to bird dieoffs in the Great Lakes, it’s probably not PC to talk about how “invasive species” can actually refine things here and there. Like:
How about the improved water clarity and smallie fishing in the Fantastic Lakes?
And how about that fish in the pic? That’s Amos Gay and his world record 5-pound, 7.5-ounce shellcracker (redear sunfish). He caught that whale in August ’98 from a hole where the Santee Cooper Diversional Canal meets Lake Moultrie.
And it wasn’t an anomaly: A 5-04 shellcracker was caught just a couple minutes before.
Conventional wisdom is that the shellcrackers got enormous though a combo of herbicides killing weeds, uncovering the canal bottom, and lots of food – in the form of zebra mussels.
I read once that biological pollution was the most insidious shape of pollution because it could never be completely eradicated. I believe it. So time for shellcracker tourneys – which probably exist already.
If you conflict, I’m opining here as someone who doesn’t possess a particularly deep truth of the su
Baab: Arizona shellcracker might be world record
A few years ago, Amos Gay, of the Phinizy, Ga., area, went fishing in the diversion canal between Santee Cooper Lakes Moultrie and Marion and brought dwelling a whopper shellcracker.
Also established as a red-ear sunfish, the 5-pound, 4½-ounce fish became the world tape for the species, netting Gay, now deceased, a place in fishing history books.
On Feb. 16, Hector Brito baited his link with a live nightcrawler in Arizona's Lake Havasu and hauled out a 5-pound, 12-ounce shellcracker. In 2011, another angler landed a 5-pound, 8.8-ounce red-ear.
If certified, Brito's fish - caught on 6-pound-test line - will be declared the new world register by the International Game Fish Association of Dania Beach, Fla., where details of his catch were sent. It automatically will become the 6-pound line class world record. The 2011 fish also would have eclipsed Gay's fish, but as far as can be determined, it was never submitted to the IGFA.
Lake Havasu hasn't been what you'd phone a giant pan fish haven, but has develop one, no thanks to the accidental introduction of quagga mussels.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle."The mussels
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