When Travis Uebinger of Auxvasse, Missouri went fishing with a buddy for white bass and walleyes on central Missouri’s famed Osage River, they ended with a way more uncommon catch than anticipated. Uebinger hooked and landed a large blue sucker—the most important on the earth, in truth.
“We were really targeting a whole bag–anything that would bite,” Uebinger mentioned in a Missouri Department of Conservation press launch. “We were on my friend’s new boat, trying it out, when I reeled it in. I didn’t know what it was, a sucker or a carp. It was my friend who said it could be a state record.”
The fish weighed 11 kilos 5 ounces on licensed scales in Jefferson City and was verified by MDC employees. Uebinger’s catch beat the Missouri document for blue sucker, which was taken within the Missouri River in April 1997 by Randy Christian, weighing 9 kilos 14 ounces.
Uebinger’s fish additionally crushes the present IGFA all-tackle world document for the species. That IGFA document is simply 2 kilos 12 ounces, caught from the East Fork of the White River in Indiana in April 2022 by angler Steven Wozniak.
Christian’s 9-pound 14-ounce Missouri blue sucker seemingly would have set the IGFA world document if he’d entered his fish with the affiliation. But Uebinger’s sucker is the highest fish as we speak and will likely be a world document if paperwork is filed with IGFA.
“That would be amazing to have a world record,” mentioned Uebinger. “Especially on a fish you weren’t targeting.”
While blue suckers are a tasty desk fish and traditionally thought of a staple meals, Uebinger has different plans for his catch.
“I contacted several taxidermists,” he mentioned. “Being in the carp family, it’s a little difficult to mount and it would have to be custom-made. Luckily, I did find a place in Springfield that would mount it, so I’ve currently got the fish wrapped up and frozen.”
READ NEXT: Rookie Bowfisherman Shoots Missouri’s New State-Record Redear Sunfish
All About Blue Suckers
Blue suckers are backside feeders with a large distribution all through the Mississippi and Missouri river drainages. They are native to the U.S. and Mexico and are present in a number of states together with Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and within the Gulf of Mexico drainage within the Rio Grande and Sabine rivers. Massive colleges of blue suckers as soon as migrated all through the Mississippi River basin. They are rarer as we speak, seemingly due to the segmentation of habitat brought on by dams.