Tuesday, April 26, 2011

A fish story, and photo, good enough for the front

It's rare for a fish to make a front page, but the Lewis County Herald in Vanceburg, Ky., put one there this week when a local angler caught, by broad definition, a 65-pound goldfish.

Merle “Plut” Horsley, right, was using a minnow on a 12-pound-test line. "After about 20 minutes something took the bait and a two-hour struggle to land a 65-pound, 49-inch-long goldfish ensued," Dennis Brown writes for the Herald. "While the species of fish hasn’t been officially confirmed, the size of the catch is remarkable. Goldfish are members of the carp family and in the wild have been know to mate with certain other species of carp, creating a hybrid."

A fish-hatchery manager for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources "said he believes the fish could be an albino or gold-colored bighead carp, noting that the scales on the fish are too small for a goldfish or common carp," Brown writes. He took the photo, too, and he owns and edits the paper. For a look at the front page, click here.

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