Girl power: Women make their marks on Ohio fishing record book
That two of the last three angling records established in Ohio belong to a woman and a girl probably merits interest. Such an occurrence, on the other hand, is indicative of little aside from confirmation that fish will nibble from the hand that feeds them.
Much, let’s remember, was made last year of a blue catfish caught and released in April by 15-year-old Jaylynn Parker. The fish, taken from an Ohio River inlet inside Clermont County, at 101 pounds and change turned out to be the biggest ever hooked on fishing tackle in the state.
The blue was attracted to bait hanging on a jugline, a logical reflex on the part of a fish and a legal means in regard to an angler. However, counting Jaylynn’s catfish in the same category as other fish caught with traditional rod-and-reel methods didn’t initially sit well with some anglers.
The sanctioning Ohio Record Fish Committee, an adjunct of the Outdoor Writers of Ohio, for a moment showed hesitancy.
After earnest discussion, panel members decided no reason existed not to recognize Jaylynn’s fish among the Buckeye State pantheon that includes a robust long-eared sunfish enshrined after tipping the scale at .41 pounds.
Sure, sure. But the sunfish was big for its brand.
Jaylynne’s blue brute, for the record, supplanted as the standard a 96-pounder caught in 2009.
The winners at all events turned out to be the released catfish and something that might be termed fishergirl’s luck.
A few disgruntled anglers were left unsatisfied by the outcome. Some critics of those critics saw the dissatisfaction as stemming from a blow dealt to manly self-esteem involving a pastime long dominated by men.
Case in point: Among 42 fish species on the records list going into last year, 40 were attached to male names.
The two exceptions, still in the book, were a longnose gar caught by Flora Irvin of Cincinnati in 1966 and a green sunfish landed by SueAnn Newswanger of Shiloh in 2018. Not to be dramatically arithmetic, that’s a measly 5% of the tackle records.
Well, the year 2024 turned out doubly cruel to anyone thinking there is something other than a good time and happenstance hooked up with fish catching.
After Parker’s entry into the record book, Teresa Croy – age unstated – of Ottawa, the Putnam County seat in northwest Ohio, pulled out something big and maybe not so mean from a private pond at a rod and gun club. The white crappie fell for a worm after jigs had produced nothing on Nov. 2, succumbing late morning after a short fight.
Croy and her husband both looked at the fish, which measured 18.5 inches, as unusually large as they tossed it in their bucket. Second thoughts led to a quick departure and a weighing, where using a certified scale witnesses can verify the heft at 3.91 pounds.
That nudged out, possibly by a worm’s weight, a 3.90-pound white crappie taken from a private pond by Kyle Rock of Zanesville. Rock’s crappie, which measured 18.5 inches, was landed in April 1995.
Ohio fish records are determined by weight, and it’s long been accepted that 3.91 is .01 more than 3.90.
Since Jan. 10, when Croy’s fish was declared a record, more than 1,600 comments have been posted about the white crappie announcement on the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s Facebook page.
Most comments offer congratulations, though there’s significant naysaying in the tradition of what disgraced Vice President Spiro T. Agnew once memorably described as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Agnew nattered that with a straight face.