It was a cold and windy afternoon in central Utah on Jan. 4. But 43-year-old Jesse Pashia knew of a protected shoreline along Gunnison Bend Reservoir where he could still wet a line. He took his trusty $18 spincast setup that he’d bought from a local hardware store and headed to the lake in Millard County, where he set up on the bank and started casting.
“I was using an orange-and-green Berkley Power Bait curly tail grub on a 1/16-ounce jig head, with a bobber on my line above the lure,” Pashia tells Outdoor Life. “It’s a place I’d caught white bass and crappies previously.”
He says the hot spot is a sunken treetop in about four feet of dingy water. And while he’s new to crappie fishing (he typically chases bass or catfish), he thought crappies would be attracted to the structure, too.
“I’d caught a couple small crappies and released them that afternoon,” explains Pashia, who lives in Sutherland. “Then about 4 p.m. I hooked a bigger, stronger fish. I figured it was a white bass until I got it close to shore and saw it was a crappie.”
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He landed the white crappie and knew right away it was a good one. Pashia measured its length at 13 3/8-inches, then released it. A couple days later, after seeing his crappie was eligible for a catch-and-release record, Pashia submitted proof of his catch to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources through the DWR’s website. (In addition to spearfishing, archery, and setline fishing records, the state agency maintains one record list for catch-and-keep records and a separate list for catch-and-release records.)
The state finally recognized Pashia’s crappie as the new state catch-and-release record on Feb. 21, and he was issued a record certificate to commemorate the achievement. By that time, however, Pashia had already caught and released two more white crappies that were bigger than the state-record crappie he caught in January. He says he caught both those fish from the same sunken treetop on Feb. 22.
“I got one crappie that measured 13.5 inches, then I caught a 14-incher,” he says. “I have 60 days to submit the largest fish for another record, and I’m gonna wait at least a month or so, because I think there are bigger crappies to catch. The spawn hasn’t even started yet.”
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