On the morning of May 18, Jeret Stevens headed out to a local lake near his home in Pioneer, Ohio. The professional chef wanted a couple of fish to cook for dinner, but the local public lake yielded none.
“That’s when I headed to a small farm pond near my parents’ home to try and catch a fish or two to eat,” the 38-year-old angler told Wired2fish.
Changing Plans Meant a Change of Luck
Stevens continued: “I got there about 10 a.m. and cast out a red wiggler worm beneath a bobber with six-pound test line using my spinning rod and reel.”
Shortly after casting that worm near the outside edge of a pond weed bed is when the hard strike came.
“It really pulled the bobber down,” he recalled. “I thought it was a bass because it was so strong. I worried it would take me into the weeds and I’d lose it.”
A Surprise at the End of the Line
“When I finally got it close to me on shore, I saw it was a sunfish and I knew it was a big one,” Stevens added.
While fishing with his friend David Maurer some years earlier, Stevens learned what the often-misidentified green sunfish actually looks like. He took a photo of the fish and sent it to Maurer.
Maurer confirmed not only that his friend caught a green sunfish, but also that it was huge. Likely, he added, even a state record.
“I knew I had to weigh it on certified scales and have the [Department of Natural Resources] verify it was a green sunfish and not a hybrid variety,” said Stevens. “I located a certified scale at a meat market in the nearby town of Pioneer, and went there to have it weighed.”
Certifying a New State Record
The meat counter scale printed out the certified weighed at 1.35 pounds.
“But the printed label from the scale showed it as ‘Seafood Salad’ — not that it was a green sunfish,” Stevens said with a chuckle.
A couple days later, the angler took the printed meat-market weight receipt and his fish to the Ohio DNR. At their office in Monpilier, fisheries biologist Brad Agler confirmed it was a green sunfish.
An official declaration now recognizes Stevens’ 11.45-inch long, 10.82-inch girth catch as the Ohio green sunfish record. It topped the old 1.2-pound, 11-inch record for the species, which SueAnn Newswanger caught in 2018 from a farm pond.
“I’m having a real skin mount made of my record sunfish, and I should have it back by Thanksgiving to hang in my home,” Stevens said.
