Paden Reese of Adairsville, Georgia and his pal Jeremy Jacobs were casting for crappies and bass on July 20. They were fishing 55-acre Paris Lake, located on the campus of Georgia Highlands college near the town of Rome.
“I made a cast with a tiny Strike King crankbait, and a fish crushed the lure as soon as it landed,” Reese tells Wired2fish. “I thought it was a crappie or a bass until it started taking line and I couldn’t stop it.
“Then I thought it was a big catfish. The fight lasted about 15 minutes, and because the lake is weedy. I thought for sure I’d lose it.”
But Reese stayed in the fight, finally working the huge fish close to shore, where weeds and cover prevented him from landing the fish while it was still a few feet from shore.
“I thought for sure I’d break the line or my rod, so I waded out and grabbed it, which I knew by then was a carp,” Reese continued. “It was huge, really heavy – much larger than the biggest fish I’d ever caught before, which was a 15-pound striper.”
Reese says he thinks the carp mistakenly hit his floating, motionless plug – taking it for a piece of bread. People visiting the college lake feed carp bread, according to Reese. Though grass carp mainly feed on weeds, they will eat bread, too.
Georgia’s DNR had stocked grass carp in the lake to help control weeds. Reese and Jacobs knew that, but they didn’t know such huge carp were in the little lake. In other trips to the lake they’d seen carp, but they’d previously only caught crappies, bass and warmouths.
“That big carp nailed my lure, taking the plug well into its mouth,” said Reese, who works for a landscape company. “No way it was foul hooked. It ate my crankbait. Both of the lure’s hooks were inside its mouth.”
In other waters with grass carp some anglers tie flies that imitate vegetation or grass. Then they chum fish with weeds to draw carp close, casting their weed-imitating flies to catch them.
The anglers brought Reese’s huge carp to Georgia’s Region One headquarters in the nearby town of Armuchee. Office staff weighed the fish at 61.4 pounds, and measured a 46.4-inch length.
Georgia does not keep records for grass carp, which usually weigh under 40 pounds. However, the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) does have full record divisions for grass carp, including fly and junior angler classes.
The IGFA all-tackle grass carp world record is 87 pounds, 10 ounces, caught in 2009 in Bulgaria. The men’s 6-pound line class tackle IGFA record is a 53-pound, 13-ounce fish caught in Japan in 2018. Reese’s 61.4-pound grass carp tops all other IGFA men’s line class divisions, with the exception of the 16-pound line-class world record which is held by an 80-pound grass carp caught in Arkansas in 2004.
If he pursues the process for recording the fish with IGFA, Reese’s 61.4-pounder could become the new 6-pound-test line-class record. With Georgia DNR personnel identifying the species, then weighing and measuring the carp, and with Jacob as a witness to the catch, it’s likely Reese’s carp would be approved by IGFA, the Florida-based world record keeping organization.
Part of the process of determining an IGFA world line-class record is testing the fishing line used in the catch. If the line exceeds IGFA testing for that line category, it is disqualified for that line division. However, if, for example, a 6-pound line test application has the line testing at 7 or 8 pounds by IGFA, the catch could qualify for the next line test category.
For now, the fish is in Reese’s freezer, and he’s considering getting a replica mount made of his grass carp.
“That light tackle fight was the best one of my life,” he says. “Hard to believe it really happened.”
