SHELLCRACKERS
In May 1962, a small spacecraft flew a three-orbit science mission around the Earth that lasted nearly five hours, and a former state judge and son of a small farmer won a Democratic primary race with the most votes ever tallied in a gubernatorial election. Those events put Scott Carpenter in space and George Wallace in Alabama’s governor’s mansion. That shows you just how much things have changed since the Cotton State record for redear sunfish was established!

That same month, T.J. Lashley Sr. of Ardilla -- now part of Dothan -- caught a shellcracker weighing 4 pounds, 4 ounces on May 5. At the time, it also established a new world record for the species. The bream’s official measurements were 15 inches long, 7 1/2 inches from top to bottom and 2 3/4 inches thick.

T.J. -- he was known to friends as “Jeff” -- began his Saturday early with a drive to Chattahoochee State Park, south of Gordon on our border with Florida, with his son R.V. and grandson Ronnie. “You couldn’t find a better place to fish,” R.V. recalled. “We fished there every week.”

Lashley remembered their renting a johnboat for 50 cents, and his father sculling the boat in search of bream. “The boat had stopped moving when he caught the fish,” said R.V. “My father fought the fish by keeping its head up. He put the fish on a stringer and continued to scull the boat.”

According to Lashley, his father was fishing with a cane pole rigged with 10-pound test and a No. 6 hook baited with two red worms collected from his dad’s yard. “The sinker was about a foot above the hook so the worm would float above the bottom,” Lashley stated.

The anglers carried their fish home in a burlap bag. No doubt the huge shellcracker died not long after Jeff Lashley threaded his stringer through its gills.

Late that afternoon, Park Supervisor Luther Collins weighed the fish, which, R.V. Lashley said, was more than 5 pounds on the park’s uncertified scales. Collins told the Dothan Eagle on May 11, 1962, that the big shellcracker would possibly have weighed between 4 and 8 ounces more had it been weighed as soon as it was caught.

District Conservation Officer J. Dan Ward, now retired after 38 years of service, admitted that he didn’t remember who called him about the fish. “I was afraid he might eat it,” he remembered, “so I rushed over to make sure that didn’t happen. When I saw the shellcracker, I said, ‘Don’t you dare clean that fish -- it’s a record!”’

Later that week, I.B. Byrd, the state’s chief biologist, declared the shellcracker a world record, and for the next 23 years, Alabama waters could boast having yielded the world records for both bluegills and redears.

Then, on May 23, 1985, C.L. Windham of Ariton, in Dale County, caught a 4-pound, 10-ounce shellcracker from Merritts Mill Pond, which is only 16 miles from Chattahoochee State Park -- but that pond is in northwest Florida. (The current world record, weighing 5 pounds, 7 1/2 ounces, was caught in South Carolina in August 1998.)

Spring-fed from the Floridan Aquifer, which flows through carbonate rock, the 20-acre lake’s waters are mineral-rich, the limestone habitat producing an abundance of snails that contribute to the exceptional growth of shellcrackers. While the lake in Chattahoochee State Park has produced other big fish, its production has been spotty over the years, owing to flooding from the Chattahoochee River.