Anglers Barry and Helen Girten had hired full-time and well-known crappie guide Trent Goss for a day of fishing on April 24. The Illinois couple and Goss headed to Grenada Lake, a 35,000-acre reservoir in north-central Mississippi that’s been on fire with big crappies, as fish are staging for spawning and heavyweight-limit catches are common.
Goss targets big crappies with forward-facing sonar — and all throughout the morning, the anglers had been slamming some big slabs.
“That morning we’d caught about 14 keepers, including two fish that weighed 2.60 and 2.75 pounds,” Goss tells Wired2fish. “Barry and Helen were happy, and the crappies were the biggest they’d ever caught.”
Finding the Day’s Biggest Catch
Around noon, the wind came up and Goss headed for a sheltered area to continue their day of fishing.
“I went to the south bank of the lake in the Pine Woods Creek area, and started looking for big fish on my forward-facing sonar,” said the 40-year old Grenada resident. “We were in six feet of water, and I spotted a fish down about 18 inches under the surface that looked huge.”
Goss uses a specialized technique targeting big crappies. He has a single 15-foot-long pole that he positions from the boat bow. Then, Goss ties 12-pound test line to the pole and a #4 hook with a single live minnow on it. A small quarter-ounce weight sits above the hook. That weight is held in place by a pair of sliding bobbins, which can be positioned up or down the line depending on the depth of water needed to fish.
“We chased down that big fish I had on the scope with my electric fishing motor,” Goss explained. “When we got close, Barry put the minnow in front of the fish and it took the minnow.”
Landing a Monster Crappie
The crappie put up a good fight. When Barry brought it close to the landing net that Goss held, the veteran guide knew the fish exceeded three pounds. And when he got it in the net, he knew it was a four-pounder — and the biggest white crappie he’d seen in five years guiding on Grenada for Grenada Lake Charters.
“I was in shock, and we all celebrated his great catch,” said Goss. “But Barry was pretty calm about the whole thing. He’s famed as a hunter who took the eighth-largest typical-rack buck in Illinois that had 14-points and scored 198 6/8-inches of rack.
“So I guess he’s pretty used to being successful in the outdoors.”
The Weigh-In Results
Goss weighed the fish on a digital scale at 4.10 pounds. The massive white crappie was 18-inches long with a 16-inch girth.
Barry’s huge crappie falls shy of the Grenada Lake record crappie, weighing 4.26-pounds and caught in a February 2024 tournament.
The Mississippi state record white crappie is also the International Game Fish Association world record, weighing 5.19 pounds taken in 1957 by Fred Bright from nearby Enid Reservoir. (Check out our post about the biggest crappie ever caught, which includes additional information about Bright’s longstanding record-holder.)
“Pictures don’t do Barry’s fish justice, it was just huge,” Goss continued. “We usually release giant crappies 15-inches or longer. But Barry is going to have his fish mounted. He has to send the whole fish to a taxidermist in Arkansas because they don’t have an existing mold that’s as large as Barry’s fish to make a mount.”
