These initial facts are pretty clear: angler David Berg of Mentor, while fishing the Lake Erie shoreline at the mouth of the Grand River in the Fairport Harbor area in northeast Ohio, at about 2 p.m. on April 18, caught a huge yellow perch.
This behemoth measured 15.75 inches long, and loaded with eggs for the spring spawn, its girth went 13.75 inches. When Berg put this Goliath of a perch on the scale at a nearby bait shop, the weight registered at 2.9 pounds.
Since the current official Ohio state record yellow perch is a 2.75 pound fish that measured 14.5 inches long and was caught in Lake Erie by Charles Thomas of Lorain on April 17, 1984, a couple things looked obvious: the fishing for super-sized perch is pretty good around the middle of April, and Berg’s catch came almost 32 years to the day after Thomas set the Ohio record, and that Berg’s fish appeared to claim the state record.
But the issue gets a little murky at this point.
In Ohio, record fish are determined on the basis of weight only, and all potential record fish must be certified by the State Record Fish Committee of the Outdoor Writers of Ohio. As with any award or distinction of significance, there are certain guidelines that must be met to maintain the integrity of the record book, and this is where’s Berg’s fish gets tagged as a “potential” state record, despite reports to the contrary.
The rules read that all potential record fish have to be examined by an Ohio Division of Wildlife fisheries biologist to determine it is the correct species. This might seem odd, since the species should be obvious to any angler, but ask the guy who several years ago insisted his modestly sized sheepshead was actually a state-record white perch. Berg’s fish was very clearly a yellow perch, and a state biologist confirmed this.
The rules also state that the record fish can not be taken from a pay lake, where years of supplemental feeding can produce freakish results. Berg’s fish came from our largest public fishing lake, so he was in the clear on that point.
A critical requirement of the process is that the “fish must be weighed on certified scales” and a copy of the county auditor’s certification must accompany the Ohio record fish application form. Berg had his fish weighed at Harbor Bait & Tackle in Painesville, and it clocked in at a whopping 2.9 pounds, but the scale’s certification was not up to date at the time.
The scale at the bait shop had been certified in the past, and it was recertified the day after the potential record perch was weighed. But, was it weighed on “certified scales”? No. At the time of the weigh-in, the scale in use was not current on its certification.
So after review by the State Record Fish Committee, Berg’s initial application for the record was turned down, and he was encouraged to have the now frozen fish reweighed on the now certified scale. The robust female was already dripping eggs at the time of the initial weighing but should still eclipse the current record when weighed again.
The 46-year-old angler made an appeal to have his original application accepted, citing the solid history of the scale, and he included an endorsement from the Lake County auditor who had certified the scale. Berg is serious about this fishing thing: He was using a St. Croix spinning rod, braided line, and the Lake Erie default perch bait — shiner minnows — when he caught the trophy.
But records do not come easily. There are hoops to jump through, forms to complete, and about a dozen guidelines to follow. The eight-member record fish committee rejected Berg’s application because the fish was not “weighed on certified scales.” And if this makes the keepers of the record book persnickety, they are proudly guilty as charged.
There are no short cuts, no gray areas to wiggle around in, no elastomeric quality to the rules. Not everybody gets a trophy. The record fish guidelines are set in stone, and for a good reason. As chairman Fred Snyder points out, the Ohio Record Fish Program has never been challenged — successfully — on a record fish certification, “due primarily to a very strict adherence to a strict set of rules. We strive to maintain this level of quality,” said Synder, a retired fisheries specialist and associate professor with Ohio Sea Grant and The Ohio State University.
The adherence to those very rules was rewarded on Friday night when angler Richard Knisley of Washington Courthouse was recognized at the annual Outdoor Writers of Ohio awards banquet for the 18.32-pound hybrid striped bass he caught last May in a feeder stream that dumps into Deer Creek Lake, about a half-hour southwest of Columbus.
Knisley caught that fish at about 3 in the morning and set out to find a scale to weigh it. He checked the nearby bait shop, but because the scale was not certified, he soldiered on, and it wasn’t until about 10 in the morning, seven hours after landing the monster hybrid, that Knisley was able to put it on a certified scale in the meat department of a Kroger store in his hometown.
An even stronger example of the lengths anglers must sometimes go to in order to have their record fish certified took place in 2013. Patrick Johnson, who works for the city of Toledo’s water department, was bowfishing with friend Brent McGlone in the waters along Lake Erie when Johnson stuck an arrow in a huge common carp.
McGlone, who owns two Ohio records in the bowfishing division, recognized that Johnson’s fish was in that lofty class, and after the scale on the boat confirmed his theory, the duo set out to have the weight certified. They knew they needed to find a scale large enough to handle a fish in excess of 50 pounds and one that carried a current certification seal. And it was the middle of the night.
Very early in the morning they managed to get inside a fish-cleaning business in nearby Port Clinton, where they weighed the carp at 53.6 pounds, which was about 6 pounds over the existing state record. But the scale did not have a valid seal, so its measure would not be acceptable. After two or three dozen phone calls, they located a certified scale large enough to handle the beast at the FedEx office on West Bancroft Street in Toledo, nearly 50 miles away. Some 16 hours had passed before the carp was weighed on a certified scale, at 53.65 pounds. And Johnson got the record.
Berg’s trophy should eventually get reweighed on a certified scale, and he likely will own the record. Until that time, the record belongs to Charles Thomas and his 1984 fish, because a record isn’t a record, until it is official.
Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey serves on the Ohio State Record Fish Committee.
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
First Published May 17, 2016, 4:29 a.m.
