Shortly before passing away in December 2007, the late R.V. Lashley displayed the mount of the record shellcracker that his father Jeff Lashley caught in May 1962. Photo by Stephen E. Davis.

Serendipity!

As far as assistant chief of fisheries for the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Nick Nichols is concerned, nothing else accounts for the unlikely existence of a state- or world-record fish. Even when all factors required to produce a record fish are present, happenstance is involved.

“The fish has to have the genetic propensity to live old and grow big,” he said, “and it has to be lucky, because mortality rates are high for just about all of our fish species.”

Purposely producing a record fish seems unattainable. Some managers of privately owned small lakes and ponds have applied the best science to try to grow the next world-record largemouth bass, yet have been unable to accomplish the feat.

Nichols is right: Only luck can explain a Cotton State bluegill record unbroken for 57 years -- even though the species is found in nearly every body of water in the state. The record shellcracker was caught 46 years ago, with the most recent panfish record being that for redbreast at 12 years.

Can we learn anything by reviewing how and where our record bream were caught, and can that knowledge be applied today to find and catch big sunfish? Let’s have a look.

BLUEGILLS
When T.S. Hudson went bream fishing on April 9, 1950 -- Easter Sunday -- he probably knew that his destination had produced the world-record bluegill back in May 1947. Coke McKenzie had caught that 4-pound, 10-ounce bream from Ketona Lake. That flooded limestone quarry is two miles north of the Birmingham International Airport, next to State Route 79. (Actually two Ketona Lakes occupy the site; the record fish came from the small 18-plus-acre pit.)

Regardless of what he actually did know, on that April day more than a half-century ago Hudson landed a bluegill that weighed 4 pounds, 12 ounces, was 15 inches long, and had a girth of 18 1/4 inches.

Since the quarry’s water was crystal-clear, Hudson and McKenzie had to hide from the watchful bream by moving away from the vertical bank. For the same reason, both anglers used light line and long cane poles to dangle their earthworms in the water.

Biologists, eager to learn the quarry’s secrets, sampled its bream and found no genetic reason for the massive fish. They did, however, find an environment suitable for producing big bream. There was nothing magical: The habitat had just the right combination of minerals, population control and fishing pressure.

According to biologists, the presence of limestone promotes high growth rates and higher productivity, because it enhances nutrients. Of course, uncontrolled reproduction would quickly lead to overcrowding and, consequently, small fish. But Ketona’s bream numbers failed to grow for two reasons: the unnatural shape of its shoreline, resulting in limited spawning habitat, and abundant bream-devouring bass.

Bream not eaten had an opportunity to grow beyond the diameter of a frying pan, provided they didn’t inhale a worm or grasshopper hiding a barbed hook. Lack of fishing pressure could have been a reason for bream reaching old age, but that seems unlikely in Birmingham at that period of time. Rather, most anglers may not have learned how to fish in the gin-clear water.

The Ketona Lakes seem unchanged since the midpoint of the last century, but that’s difficult to determine, as a corporation now owns the property, and it’s not open for fishing. You can, however, view the old quarry by searching Google maps on the Internet and entering the words “Ketona Lakes.”