The second shot was the charm for Frank Reynolds, a Missouri bowfisherman who arrowed the new state-record grass carp from his own private pond in early August. Reynolds’ record was made official Wednesday, a little over three weeks after he harvested the whopper carp on Aug. 12. That wasn’t his first brush with the fish, though, and Reynolds told officials with the Missouri Department of Conservation that he’d shot and lost the same grass carp while bowfishing the day before.
“I probably messed around for 10 or 15 minutes trying to get him to shore, but he had so much fight in him,” Reynolds told the agency in a press release. “The arrow ended up pulling out and he took off across the pond.”
That was on Aug. 11. The very next day, Reynolds returned to the small pond, where he found the fish again and redeemed himself.
“He nailed it right in the head,” Reynold’s friend Dave Tyree wrote in a Facebook post on Aug. 13. “An amazing fish brother, we are very, very happy for you.”
Although it took him two arrows over two days to seal the deal, Reynolds told MDC that he’d been after this same grass carp for much longer than that.
“I’ve been trying to get this thing for years now,” Reynolds said. “It’s just been so skittish. It’s hard to get close enough without him getting away or going underwater.”
Reynolds, who lives in Linn, explained that the state-record fish was one of four grass carp that he had stocked in his private pond more than 20 years ago. And while there is some controversy over whether stocked fish from private water bodies should be eligible for record status, the MDC still recognizes these catches as potential state records. (So does the International Game Fish Association, but Reynolds’ fish wouldn’t have been accepted by the IGFA anyways because it wasn’t caught with conventional tackle.)
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After landing the fish, Reynolds knew he wanted to weigh it but he didn’t have a scale that went over 50 pounds. So, he called his friend Dave Tyree, who brought over his 300-pound scale to weigh the carp.
“After the initial weigh in on my scale I told Frank you might have just broken the state record man,” Tyree wrote on Facebook. “We then contacted Osage County conservation agent Katie Stoner and set up an official meeting to get it weighed on a certified scale … and it turned out my scale wasn’t off by much.”
Reynolds’ fish officially weighed 74 pounds 2 ounces and measured 48 inches long with a 36-inch girth. It replaces the previous state record, a 71-pound 4-ounce grass carp caught from Lake Showme in 1999.