Bowfisherman shoots world-record fish; ‘Just got lucky’
One day last month after work, Mitchell Dering of Missouri decided to go bowfishing and wound up adding to his “collection” of record fish, this one a world record.
He was bowfishing at Duck Creek Ditch #105 on March 14 and “just got lucky, honestly,” Dering told the Missouri Department of Conservation. “We shoot a lot of smaller fish. I knew it was a bullhead, but didn’t know it was a brown bullhead. But I knew it was large for its size.”
He found out just how big the next day when he had MDC Southeast Regional Office staff weigh it on a certified scale in Wappapello. It weighed 4 pounds, and easily surpassed the state record of 2 pounds, 7 ounces caught from Wappapello Lake in 1994.
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But it also qualifies as a bowfishing world record, which currently stands at 3 pounds, 4 ounces for a brown bullhead.
“That’s honestly pretty awesome,” Dering told MDC. “I’ve bowfished for quite a while. We’ve won a few tournaments in Kentucky and Tennessee and placed in numerous other tournaments. That’s cool [qualifying for a world record], I didn’t know that.”
Dering briefly held the state record for spotted gar in 2019 before it was broken. He told MDC he’s now working on his collection of state records, and plans to get his bullhead mounted.
“I’ve never mounted anything before,” he said. “I broke the state record for spotted gar a few years ago, but some guy broke the record two years later so it’s not in the record books anymore. But I’m working on getting me a collection of state records. I guess potentially world records now!”