When Jesse Miller took an hour or two on April 1 for his first fishing trip of the year, he had low expectations.
He merely wanted to spend a little time before his shift as a pizza delivery driver began, fishing the Great Miami River, and working out the kinks in his fishing equipment.
So he bought two dozen minnows and headed for one of his favorite spots on the river not far from his hometown of Middletown, Ohio.
That trip didn’t last long, though. Fifteen minutes after he tossed a line out, his bobber went under. It didn’t take him long to pull in a crappie that was later weighed on certified scales at 4.27 pounds.
The giant measured 18.3 inches long and had a girth of 16 inches. Miller caught it on an ultralight rod and reel and 6-pound monofilament line.
“It looked kind of like a white crappie, but it also had markings of a black crappie,” Miller told Wired2Fish. “So I wondered if I might have a hybrid.”
Fisheries Scientist Weighs In
Miller’s fish was inspected by fisheries biologist Kipp Brown, of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, who confirmed the angler’s guess.
Brown took into account the crappie’s dorsal spine count, its dorsal fin length, its body depth, and patterns on the fish and determined it had a mix of elements from both white and black crappie.
Brown submitted his findings to the Outdoor Writers of Ohio, the official keepers of Ohio state-record fish, and it agreed to set a new category, hybrid crappie. So Miller’s name will go into the record books as a first, and an impressive one at that.
For comparison, Ohio’s state record white crappie is 3.91 pounds. Its black crappie mark is 4.5 pounds.
Ohio has other records for hybrids such as tiger muskies, saugeyes, sunfish and striped bass.
“It’s hard to differentiate if this fish came from natural reproduction in the wild or if it was raised in a hatchery somewhere and was stocked in a private pond and made its way into the river,” Brown told Wired2Fish. “But we do know that it’s not unheard of to see hybrid crappie in Ohio.
“In our surveys, we might see one or two out of a couple thousand that we sample. But our anglers report catching one every once in a while. And they’re usually big fish.”
Miller’s fish was an old-timer, Brown theorized, not uncommon for a hybrid fish.
This isn’t the first time there’s been confusion around identification of crappie. Back in 20024, an angler in Iowa caught one that the state’s DNR initially called a record black crappie in a Facebook post, only to be recanted later. That one needed a DNR test for verification.
Big Fish, Big Fame
The early-spring catch has brought about a change in Miller’s life. His once somewhat secret fishing hole is no longer secret.
”I went down there the other day and there was hardly a place to park,” he said.
But he said that will probably change once the excitement of his catch dies down. Meanwhile, he is basking in the attention his big fish has brought.
“It’s pretty overwhelming for a small-town kid,” said Miller, who is 29.
He plans to have his fish mounted to serve as a reminder of a special day. “
“I have a crappie that weighed 2.3 pounds already hanging on the wall,” he said. “This fish is almost twice as big. Unbelievable.”
