Two brothers will see their names in the Texas record books after reeling in the biggest black and white crappies ever caught and recorded in the Concho River. Mason and Michael Schwartz landed the pending-record fish in early March, a Facebook post from Texas Parks & Wildlife (TPW) reports.
According to TPW, it was Mason who landed the Concho’s biggest-ever black crappie, which weighed in at 1.4 pounds and measured 12.5 inches. Michael’s white crappie was similar in size, weighing 1.25 pounds and stretching more than 13 inches in length.
“I caught mine last Tuesday (March 5) on a topwater popper,” Mason Schwartz tells Field & Stream. “Michael got his the next day on a spinnerbait. We were actually bass fishing, and they bit our bass lures.”
Black and white crappie inhabit inland waters across most of the Lone Star State. Aside from obvious color and pattern differences, the two crappie species can be distinguished by their preferences for different types of habitat. Black crappie tend to hold tight to heavy cover, for example, while schools of white crappie will often suspend in the water column above sunken tree branches and other types of structure.
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The Concho River is home to several other species of gamefish including largemouth and striped bass, flathead catfish, rainbow trout, and red-breasted sunfish. The previous waterbody record for white crappie on the Concho weighed .82 ounces and measured 12.5 inches. T. Dean McIntruff landed that fish on a Glover River crawdad pattern back in 2007. Mason Schwartz’s black crappie is the first record for the species that TPW has ever recognized on the Concho River.
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