Huge carp found in Kansas ditch is no fish story

By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) – Rarely is a trophy fish so easy to land.

An animal control officer in Olathe, Kansas, recently hauled in a 60-pound (27-kg) carp that was lying in a drainage ditch. A man out for a walk last week spotted the fish and called police, city animal control officer Jamie Schmidt said on Tuesday.

The man estimated the fish at more than four feet (1.22 meters) – and he was not telling a whopper, said Schmidt, who responded to the call in suburban Kansas City. The carp lay dead in a roadside ditch that connects to a lake and it apparently swam there when heavy rain caused flooding, she said.

“When the guy said it was four foot, I thought ‘Well, most men tell fish stories’ and I thought it wasn’t going to be even close to that,” Schmidt said. “I was very shocked.”

Schmidt said the fish measured about 3 ½ feet (1.06 meters) long and weighed 60 pounds (27 kg). It was a grass carp, said Lucas Kowalewski, fisheries biologist for the Kansas Department of Parks, Wildlife and Tourism. The Kansas record for grass carp caught by angling is 77.7 pounds (35 kg), according to department records.

Schmidt said the fish had not decomposed and was lying in shallow water. She put plastic trash bags around the fish to drag it to her vehicle, where she loaded it into a kennel that has a power lift.

Schmidt had her picture taken with the fish, which appears on the Olathe Police Department Facebook page. After the picture, the fish met a quick demise.

“We treated it like any other dead animal,” Schmidt said. “We put it into our incinerator.”

(Reporting by Kevin Murphy; Editing by Sandra Maler)