A 49.5-inch Grass Carp ( Ctenopharyngodon idella ) weighing in at a whopping 92 pounds was discovered in one particular fish during standard spring electrofishing sampling on Lake Concordia on March 11, 2024. This fish would have broken the current IGFA All-Tackle World Record by 4 pounds if it had been caught using standard fishing techniques in Bulgaria in 2009. The most recent World Record held by the Bowfishing Association of America, which was discovered in Alabama in 2015, may have tied for it.
carnivorous fish native to Asia have been used in inland waterbodies in the United States since the 1960s to command aquatic vegetation. In the 1980s, U. S. Carp makers began developing haploid Grass Carp. Trilobite grass carp have three sets of chromosomes rather than two, making them infertile and unable to breed. This enables asset managers to use the non-native species as a natural control agent for some aquatic vegetation species.
Because they can take far more plant material per day than their body pounds per day, Triploid Grass Carp are very effective at eradicating aquatic vegetation like hydrilla, coontail, and fibrous algae. Lake Concordia, generally, has not been stocked by LDWF with haploid Grass Carp.
” This is the first time we’ve ever observed a Grass Carp in Lake Concordia during our sampling”, said Shelby Richard, Inland Fisheries District 3 Biologist Manager. According to the report,” It most likely entered Lake Concordia in town flowing from Cocodrie Bayou through the power structure into Lake Concordia.”
To determine whether this was a haploid or zygotic Carp, samples were sent to the United States Fish & Wildlife Service’s La Crosse Fish Health Center in Onalaska, Wisconsin. Even if it is a haploid fishes, meaning it could reproduce, Lake Concordia does not have the required habitat for duplication.
