Puny fish reeled in by Missouri angler breaks record. ‘My friends thought it was a joke’
A St. Louis angler and his son made a surprise catch when fishing on a private pond in Franklin County on July 3. Robert Audrain III pulled in a 4-ounce longear sunfish, which happened to be a new state record, the Missouri Department of Conservation reported.
“I was fishing off my father-in-law’s dock at a private lake a little south of Eureka,” Audrain said in a July 22 news release. “I was with my 12-year-old son and we knew there was some good-sized sunfish in the lake. I was using my handline and it was the first line I threw in when we caught the fish.”
The freshwater fish is a member of the sunfish family known as Centrarchidae and can be commonly found in the Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds, according to Animal Diversity Web. They’re usually brightly colored and strongly compressed and are known for their long, opercular flap which gives off an appearance of a “long ear,” Animal Diversity says.
The colorful catch was weighed on a certified scale at MDC’s St. Louis Regional Office and comes in as the 8th state-record fish recorded for the year.
“It’s funny because most of my friends thought it was a joke,” Audrain told MDC. “Because of the fish’s size, they really didn’t think that it was a record.”
Before Audrain’s longear sunfish, the record was held by a 3-ounce fish from Lick Log Creek which was caught in 1993, according to MDC.
“My buddy’s father is a taxidermist, and I think I’m going to have him mount it,” Audrain said, according to MDC. “But I think my son and I are going to try for another record. We’re pretty sure there’s a bigger fish in that lake. I think it’d be cool for him to beat my record!”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 6:26 PM with the headline "Puny fish reeled in by Missouri angler breaks record. ‘My friends thought it was a joke’."