LINCOLN – He has landed tonss of striped bass in Narraganset Bay,many of them real lunkers, but the fish Dave Pickering landed in fresh water was beyond all expectations.
Fishing an undisclosed location in Rhode Island, Pickering would have set a new record by pulling in a 36-pound common carp. It is the largest freshwater fish ever taken in Rhode Island, over a pound bigger than the previous record a whopping 35-pound pike.
“It was truly was a fish of a lifetime,” said Pickering.
The fish will not go down as an official state record though.
“In order for that to happen, I would have had to kill the fish and taken it to a tackle shop to have it weighed,” said Pickering. “That’s the way things are done in Rhode Island. But I did weigh it on a Berkeley digital scale, we also took some pictures and released it. I am hoping we meet up again some day.”
The fish beat the previous record for a carp by over than three pounds, and it was Pickering who held the previous record, set earlier this year.
In fact, while most carp fishermen go a lifetime without landing a lunker that tips the scales at 30 pounds, Pickering has nailed three of them this year.
While it will not go into the official state records, the catch will become the new Carp Angler Group record for the state. Pickering is state chairman of that group, which maintains carp records for every state in the country.
“In order to qualify for that record, all that is needed was an accurate weight, a picture and a witness, and I had all three,” Pickering said.
Thirty-pound carp are rare in Rhode Island, and Pickering said as president of the Carp Angler Group, that he knows of only four others that have been caught, all by different people. He is the only one in the group’s archives that has landed three plus-30-pounders.
“This fish has drawn national attention in the carp world as fishermen from all over the country have commented on the catch on the Carp Angler Group Forum which is on their website,” said Pickering. While the location where he landed the fish will remain a secret, his method will not. Pickering said he landed the fish on a Chub Stalker carp rod with a Shimano 3500 Baitrunner reel that was spooled with 15 pound test Berkley Big Game line.
“For bait, I was using Pescaviva pineapple flavored sweet corn on a hair rig that was fished ahead of an oatmeal based method ball,” said Pickering, getting technical with his description.
Pickering fishes extensively for carp all over Rhode Island as well as nearby Massachusetts. He has landed thousands of carp and catches upwards of 650 carp a year.
The Lincoln resident is also a member of the New England Outdoor Writers’ Association and has written about carp fishing in many national and regional magazines. He also conducts seminars on carp fishing in New England.
