Location: Minnesota
Date: 7/14/08
Time: Mid-Morning
Method: Electro Shocking
Length: 18"
Weight: 2 pounds 6 ounces

This Hogsucker was shocked up in a riffle channel. It easily eclipses the current state record of 14.25" and 1 pound 15 ounces. Luckily, it was safely released.





And no, I will not tell you where it was netted... at least not yet...

Cool! So I have a chance.

14.25" ?!

Dang it, I went off and dumped a good one back in the river again...



Those Hogs are such cool fish. I would struggle with harvesting one.



The one in Tyler's photo looks much darker than mine from the Root which would lead me to believe that there are a handful of rivers in the state that could put off that record.

Good luck catching one, they require some good mantra!

Thanks for the pics TW.

14" is the small end of adulthood. Nice pic though Tyler. :)

E. Sub: How big was yours? It easily looks larger than 15", in fact it looks about the same size as mine. The current state record was 14.25" and 7.125" in girth. So if you catch another one that size take the measurements before you whack it.

Personally, if (maybe when?) I catch a record one I would think about trying to submit it alive (like the guy did with the largemouth) granted, he got in trouble and the fish died anyway... but it would be cool to see if an aquarium (Cabelas, the Zoo, or underwater world) would take it. If I did have to kill it I think I would want Jknuth to make me a mount. I think he would do a good job of preserving the fish for posterity's sake.

Ben: The fish I released was 18" long and weighed 2 pounds 6 ounces. That beat the old MN state record by 3.75" and 7 ounces.

I don't know why but the old Hogsucker record has stood for 27 years, despite the fact that we have two pics of new record fish right here.

Anybody else: Does anyone know what the world record is? I am curious to know if it could be beaten in MN waters.

Wow, what a fish! That's pretty cool looking. I know where you are going to be fishing next week!

I'd have a hard time keeping one too, but agree that it would be kind of cool to have a mount of one.

We have some really huge Hogsuckers in central Wisconsin.
My personal best is 16"
They just separated the records for suckers in WI and Hogs have no title granted yet. I should make a run and nab one for the record.

The more I learn about fishing in the midwest the more I realize how lucky I am to live in Wisconsin.
So many species and types of water and most with very good growth.


To bad we dont have any Mooneye in the state or I would have caught one.
:D

Tyler,

That is one nice sucker! Cool pic too.

We all really have a good chance at some of these roughfish records.

JKnuth,

You are taking this Mooneye thing really hard. You sound like me with the Blue Sucker. I might take Doc's motto and change it a bit. "The Blue Sucker will just have to wait." And that is not by choice like his jab at the walleye. Come over to the Chippewa between Eau Claire and the confluence, drown some crawlers, and you will get your Mooneye my friend. We get them things every time I hit that river and nice ones too. By the way, they make great catfish bait too.

lol

I plan on trying that area in the near future.

I tell ya when I get one be prepared for a jig that never ends. Dancing in a circle like a mad leprechaun under a full moon.
Eeye ta tye te Tye tye tye

Ok off to bed

I told Doc that if I catch a Blue Sucker, I was going to do a running canonball off the bow of my boat.

I feel your pain!

You wouldn't do a cannonball off the front, you could scare the other ones away.

Ty

Ty -

best I can say is that I measured the distance from my knuckle to the end of my finger and plotted out a measurement on photoshop to see the length. The fish in my photo is over fourteen inches. I did not account for the angle that I am holding it at.

I am not confident that the state record hog would last in the tank at Cabela's. I am pretty sure that the big cats would eat it.

Is there a master angler award for a catch and release fish like the one I let go?

Boys - as for the Blues, if they do still really exist in the North Branch Root then I have a few spots that I would recommend. Anyone up for a paddle for a shot at some Blue's?

H

A buddy of mine D.T. (also a member on here) caught an released a 17" er last year on on the Zumbro River. He has a picture of it next to a tape measure.

Kudos to those guys releasing state record fish! I'm not sure how I'd handle that, but that's a different topic.

Thanks for sharing those pics Tyler. Its funny how much those things vary in weight. I just caught a 16 incher on the Chippewa River that only weighed 14 ounces. But that fish is just downright scary beefy....I would have a hard time harvesting one of those too, I think. Their just too cool of a fish!

I think if I caught a state record I would have to harvest it. In some ways I hate to kill such a fish, but on the other hand its a matter of record. And it brings fish like that into the spotlight, just look at the response to Andy's golden.

E. sub: You are holding that fish at a pretty decent angle too... maybe we could get a pic of mine and yours into the same resolution and size, and then measure the distance from the eye to the nostril or the length of a fin to compare them. I am curious to see which one is bigger.

Me and Momma Nature have a deal....its like this, If I do not kill her brooders she lets me catch them in multiple species.

No prob on the photos, what can I do to help?

This is the one that Tyler Holm was talking about. Zumbro River CPR.

that fish is a tank....

Ratio
---------- Average
eye to lips 6.049
lips 13.367
eye to head 16.276
dorsal fin 9.250
depth at dorsal 6.072
peducnle 17.544
tail fin 8.314

The two most closest ratios were the dorsal fin and the distance from the eye to the lips.



Fishbase.com did not have morphometrics for the northern hog sucker, so I tried working some up on my own. The Red lines on my image represent the measurements I took on DT's and my fish. the ratio is =total length/ length of segment. That way a fish that has a "eye to lips measurement" of 2 inches would be ~12" long.

I tried to focus on measurements that were both easily defined and represented well in pictures. Pelvic and pectoral fins were out because these are usually not held perpendicular to the camera. Measurements on the body and head seemed like they would be more consistent.

E.Sub, this might make it easier for you to measure your slanted fish. Maybe you could compare the length of one of your left hand fingers to the the length of the dorsal fin? Or the width of your finger in the second photo to the eye to lip distance?