# new Crappie State record



## 1gmkiller (Mar 14, 2009)

well here's the story. I have a friend that was fishing in Willard for Crappie and caught an 18 3/8" crappie NO LIE. He took it to Willard FISH AND GAME.
They measured it and took a picture of him with it and entered him in the fishing contest they have every year. The bad thing is they never thought to register it for a Fish Ohio,or even the State record. I talked to the guy thats mounting the fish for him, he said by the time that he got the fish to mount he had the fish on ice for 4 days waiting for the taxadermist to get back home from vacation. The taxidermist said the fish was 17 3/4 of an inch when he got it from my friend, and the current State record is 18 1/4 inches. He said my friend is ready to kick himself in the A$$.


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## mkombe (May 23, 2007)

Someone may correct me here but I believe State Records are determined by weight and not length.

Regardless, thats an awesome crappie! Congrats to your buddy.


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## 1gmkiller (Mar 14, 2009)

I'm not sure about pan fish but I think it goes by length, but then agian I could be wrong. That's just what the taxidermist told me.


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## jbrown (Jun 4, 2008)

mkombe said:


> Someone may correct me here but I believe State Records are determined by weight and not length.
> 
> Regardless, thats an awesome crappie! Congrats to your buddy.


Yea that's true. Length doesn't matter, just the weight does. Either way though, your friend kind of screwed up... unfortunately. He should've taken it right to a certified scale somewhere with about 3 witnesses. Shoulda Coulda Woulda. That's a huge crappie though... definitely one to be proud of.


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## bkr43050 (Apr 5, 2004)

As was mentioned the state records are determined by weight alone. What you may be thinking of is that there are often programs with catch and release records listed which are done by length only.

While that is certainly a monster crappie he most likely was not close to the state record for either black or white crappie if he caught it recently. The record fish would have been stuffed full of eggs in the spring making them much fatter. The length certainly would have been enough to get the fish to the record but hitting the record weight relies on adequate food and most likely a pile of eggs. Who knows? That fish may have had a chance to challenge the record in the spring.

By the way the record weights on the crappie are 4.5# for a black crappie and 3.9# for a white. I always have a hard time imagining the girth on a crappie of that weight. A 1.5-2.0# crappie is huge by most people's standards and that is only half the size of the record.


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## 1gmkiller (Mar 14, 2009)

I am good friends with the Taxidermist and the person who caught the fish. I'm gonna try to get some pictures soon and I will definatly post them on here. I have seen my share of 12, 13, even 14 incher's but never a Crappie that big. I couldn't imagine pulling that thing in, you might even think it's a smallmouth at first


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## robert44ht5 (Mar 2, 2009)

Just a note to add here... I caught many many black crappie in the 14" - 19" range .. they were large enough to fit your fist in thier mouths. That should give everyone an idea of this fishes size. Nice catch! Especialy if it was a white. I never seen a white that large. The lbs. of my fish were all upto 2.5 lbs. So I knew mine were no records. I did have one entered in the state ohio that was white and only 14"


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