Iowa’s Black Crappie record in limbo as officials try to verify the species

The jury is still out on whether John Foster’s 4-plus pound crappie will remain an Iowa record. Foster caught the fish on September 23 and Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials announced the new fishing record in a Facebook post two days later. Shortly thereafter, however, the DNR updated its post to clarify that Foster’s black crappie might actually be a hybrid crappie — in which case it would not qualify as a new state record. The fish is currently living in an aquarium at Bass Pro Shops while officials try to verify the species.

Foster caught his crappie from Sundown Lake, a private lake open only to members of a local homeowners association. The approximately 400-acre lake is located in Appanoose County, about 85 miles southeast of Des Moines.

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“I had already caught six or eight crappie from a pile of bushes in five feet of water,” says the 67-year-old retiree Outdoor living. “Then I made a cast with a 1/16-ounce Road Runner jig and lost a big fish that got my line tangled in cover. I re-rigged with another Road Runner and made another cast to the same spot, and got a hit from another big fish.

The fish tried to get back into the brush, but Foster kept the line tight and quickly got it into his boat. He scooped up the mess with a landing net and couldn’t believe how big it was. He knew he had to weigh the fish, so he called his brother-in-law and fishing partner Steve Harding, who met him at the marina.

After seeing the fish, Harding decided they needed to contact the DNR to have it officially weighed and verified. The two fishermen called the state’s Rathbun Fish Hatchery and brought Foster’s fish there.

“[Someone] There he told me it was a black crappie because it had seven or eight spines in the dorsal fin,” says Foster. “He said it could be a black crappie, which could be weighed according to the state record and that it would be weighed on a certified scale. The scale at the hatchery was not certified, so we drove to a nearby meat market. It weighed the same on the meat market’s certified scale as it did at the hatchery: 4.08 pounds.”

That weight was more than enough for Foster’s crappie to break the previous Iowa black crappie record, which weighed 3.88 pounds and was caught in 2013. But within a few days of his fish being added to the record book, Foster heard from a DNR official who said they weren’t sure his fish was a black crappie after all, and that it could be a hybrid crappie. (Iowa is home to both white and black crappies, and while rare, the two species are capable hybridize in the wild.) The agency told Foster that they needed a fin sample from the fish to verify the species, which wasn’t a problem because Foster’s crappie was easy enough to find.

“After we weighed the fish at the meat market, I called Bass Pro Shops near Des Moines and asked if they wanted a state record black crappie in their store tank,” says Foster. “They said sure, so we took the fish to Bass Pro… and they released it into the large aquarium display in the store.”

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Foster says a DNR official went to the store a few days later and snipped a tick. Those DNA results still haven’t come back, and at this time, Foster’s fish is still listed as the state’s black crappie record. However, if the fish turns out to be a hybrid, Foster said it will be removed from Iowa’s record book because the state does not recognize hybrid crappies as records — even though neighbors Illinois and Nebraska do, as Foster notes.

“That seems like a logical solution to this problem. Just make my fish the Iowa hybrid crappie record,” Foster says. “But either way, it’s still a great fish, and I’ll have a replica made of it…I can also visit the fish whenever I want and watch it swim around the Bass Pro tank.”