Yes, catch and release works!

[Al Agnew]

I floated the river yesterday, as I reported in the Big River forum.  At one point I passed two guys fishing from kayaks.  I thought they looked a little familiar, and guessed that I had seen them in photos on a fishing group on Facebook at some point.  But I'm usually kinda anti-social when I'm fishing solo, so we only exchanged greetings and I went on down the river.  But I was curious, so I watched the posts on the fishing groups I belong to on FB last night and this morning, and sure enough, a guy posted a couple videos of floating a river and catching a nice largemouth and a drum.  He was using one of those all white Dobyns rods, and I remembered the guys in the video using those rods, and he looked like the guy I'd seen.  So I posted and asked if they had seen an old guy in a green solo canoe pass them.  Yes, it was me.

Now this guy had posted a couple weeks back about catching a big smallmouth.  His personal best, in fact.  As we exchanged comment on FB, he mentioned that fish again, and told me he had caught it just a couple miles downstream from where I had encountered him yesterday.  He reposted the photo of his fish.  I looked at it closely.

Now...back in early April I reported on here about a float with my brother, where he'd caught a 21 inch, 4 pound 11 ounce smallmouth, his personal best Ozark stream fish.  And I went back and looked at the photos I'd taken of his fish...

They were the same fish!  This fish had a chewed up tail with a distinctive shape to the notches in it, and a very deep slit in the dorsal fin.  Yep, this guy's fish had the same notches and slit.  And as I looked at his photo knowing about where he'd caught it and exactly where my brother had caught it, looking at the background of the photo I could see exactly where he was when the photo was taken...I could take you to within five feet of where he was standing in the photo.  It was at the bottom of the pool just below the run where my brother had caught it.  He said he'd measured it at 20.5 inches but didn't weigh it.  I know I measured it with tail lobes completely squeezed together the way you're supposed to on measuring for minimum length limits in Missouri, and the upper lobe had gone what looked like an inch past the 20 inch mark I'd just made on my paddle blade.  So I suspect the real length was somewhere between his measurement and mine, but my brother weighed it on his fairly reliable scale, so I know the weight when he caught it was about right.

Pretty cool that a single big fish had provided two different guys with their personal bests, a couple months apart!  And he released it carefully so it's probably still there.

[MoCarp]

Recaptures are cool,  chasing named fish in the carp world is an interesting phenomena, imagine if you saw a post with that smallie on a stringer all washed out dead, or worse on the end of a gig 😱 something we carpers experience too often.

The old fish called parrot ( looked like a parrot mouth) last year of its life it was caught four times in 2017. It lived in Berkshire’s Cranwells Lake on the Wasing Estate, normally weighed in the 60# range, top weight was 68#.

Many anglers wanted to fish there however requirements were stiff, It took over 2 years in advance if you passed the vetting process...pretty pricy as well.

https://www.wasing-weddings.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wasing-Fisheries-Price-List-2015-2016.pdf

[MoCarp]

Here is a member of our carp group (CAG) about 5000 strong now, 25 years and still kicking...he was nice to share bert

[MoCarp]

Here is an interesting fish, will be interesting to see this one a 50, sorry no bfing where this fish was stocked