This 11-Year-Old Angler Took His Record Crappie Home for Dinner

It was round noon on March 19 when Xuan Qi and his 11-year-old son, Brian, launched their Tracker bass boat on Stillhouse Hole Lake. The 2 had been fishing on the higher finish of the reservoir, which covers 6,400 acres in east-central Texas. Utilizing an electrical motor, they had been slowly trolling for white bass and crappies. Someday round 2 p.m. a heavy fish hit Brian’s small white swimbait.

“Brian has been fishing since age 5 and loves it,” Xuan tells Out of doors Life. “He is aware of an excellent fish when it hits his lure. So, I finished trolling whereas he fought the fish. Quickly he introduced it to the boat, and I netted it and introduced it in.”

Xuan says it was the largest black crappie that both of them had ever caught from the lake. Considering it could possibly be a lake document, they appeared on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website and noticed that the youth crappie document for Stillhouse Hollow was a ten.88-inch fish weighing lower than a pound.

Xuan knew his son’s fish was larger than that. So, he contacted Bob Maindelle, an area information who runs Holding the Line Guide Service, and he requested him what steps they wanted to take to submit a possible document.

Maindelle, who operates an official TPWD weigh station out of his storage, was joyful to assist the 2 fishermen. Assembly them at residence, he first verified the species as a black crappie. Then, together with his spouse there as a witness, Maindelle measured the fish at 15 inches lengthy and put it on his licensed scale, which registered 1.75 kilos.

To finish the method, Maindelle helped the Qis navigate TPWD’s web site and submit an internet document utility. Though the appliance remains to be pending, Brian’s fish ought to simply exchange the present junior waterbody document.

Learn Subsequent: Iowa Fisherman Skips Super Bowl to Take Kids Fishing, Ends Up Catching a State-Record Crappie

Xuan says that after ending that course of, they went proper again to trolling and filling their cooler.

“We caught a complete of eighteen crappies and a pair white bass,” Xuan says. “We filleted and ate all of them.”