Missouri crappie could be international record

~ Father-son fishing trip netted a state record.

FULTON, Mo. -- John Horstman got a little workout in a recent fishing trip, when he landed a crappie that broke Missouri's state pole-and-line record and could be an international record.

Horstman, 69, and his son, Doug, were on a sort of annual trip April 21. They had permission to fish a private lake in their home area of rural Callaway County, and started fishing around 9 a.m. It was their first time there.

They were fishing with live minnows, hooking the bait fish through the lips, from the bottom up. By 11 a.m. they had caught several nice crappie, including a 15-incher and a slightly shorter one.

Then John Horstman hooked a monster.

"We could tell it was big," he said, "but we couldn't tell what it was until it got up close to the boat. When we saw it, we knew it was a good crappie."

The fish fought hard, making several runs that taxed John's spincast reel. He was pretty sure his 14-pound-test line would hold, but he worried that the fish might straighten his No. 4 wire hook.

After a few tense moments, John got the 19-inch black crappie in the boat and placed it in the live well and went back to fishing, but the morning's action was over, so they went home. When they got there, they put John's big crappie on a scale.

"It weighed a little over 5 pounds on that scale, so we got kind of excited," he said. "Until then, we thought it probably weighed around 4 pounds."

Doug called the Missouri Department of Conservation and learned that the state record for a black crappie was 4.5 pounds. The next stop was the Conservation Department headquarters in Jefferson City, Mo. With a fisheries programs supervisor in tow, they went to the produce department of a grocery store, where the scale showed the fish weighed 5.02 pounds.

The Conservation Department has certified the fish as a new state record. The previous record dates to 1967, when Ray Babcock of Independence, Mo., caught a 4-pound, 8-ounce black crappie from a farm pond in Clay County. The state record for the closely related white crappie belongs to Samuel H. Barbee of Poplar Bluff, Mo., who caught a 4-pound, 9-ounce fish from a farm pond in 2000.

Horstman's fish is larger than the current all-tackle record listed by the International Game Fish Association in Dania Beach, Fla. Two fish are tied for their record. Both those fish weighed 4.5 pounds.

Horstman donated his lunker -- still swimming -- to Bass Pro Shops. It will be kept in quarantine and eventually go on display in an aquarium at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Springfield, Mo.