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Jeffrey Needles caught the brand new state report on a throwline

Jeffrey Needles holds up the brand new Missouri state-record yellow perch alongside his two children. Picture courtesy of Missouri Dept. of Conservation

Missouri’s first report fish of 2024 is formally within the books. The 12-ounce yellow perch was caught by Jeffrey Needles on Lake Lotawana, a small, 600-acre lake southeast of Kansas Metropolis. Needles was fortunate sufficient to catch the state-record perch whereas fishing the lake together with his household on Jan. 3.

Needles caught the fish on a “throwline” and never a rod-and-reel, so it’s going to fall beneath the Missouri Division of Conservation’s “different technique” report class. Different different strategies accepted by the state company embody trotlining, spearfishing, and bowfishing. The MDC factors out in a press launch that the earlier different strategies report for yellow perch weighed 10 ounces and was caught from a personal pond in 2019.

Needles, who additionally lives within the metropolis of Lake Lotawana, knew concerning the standing report and had lengthy thought of beating it. When he headed out to go fishing that morning, he advised his spouse he’d do exactly that.

“I’d talked about breaking this report so much,” Needles advised the MDC. “My spouse requested me what I used to be doing that day and I jokingly advised her, ‘I’m going out to interrupt the report for yellow perch!’”

The brand new report holder was unavailable for remark. Nevertheless, Out of doors Life touched base with a few the parents at MDC who helped affirm and confirm Needles’ state-record perch.

“The climate that day wasn’t too dangerous, within the 40s, and Needles caught the fish inside an hour of fishing the lake,” Missouri’s report fish coordinator Andrew Branson tells Out of doors Life. “He simply used a bait on a hook and landed the fish.”

Branson explains that Needles contacted the state instantly after catching his yellow perch. He then met MDC fisheries biologist Caleb Pemberton at a close-by grocery retailer in Blue Springs. They weighed and measured the fish on a licensed scale there, and Pemberton positively recognized it as a yellow perch. He additionally helped Needles fill out the required paperwork to certify the report, which was made official on Jan. 11.  

Learn Subsequent: Are Report Fish Tales as Fascinating as They Used to Be?

Needles went out of his method to preserve the fish within the water (presumably in a reside nicely) whereas transporting it to and from the grocery retailer. He then launched it alive and nicely again into Lake Lotawana.

“Having my children there for that second made it much more particular.” stated Needles, who plans to have a duplicate mount product of his record-breaking yellow perch.