State wildlife officials in Missouri consider bowfishing “a different kind of challenge.”
“Connecting with a fish is harder than you might think,” according to the Missouri Department of Conservation, and it’s a challenge that can be “quite tricky.”
But Mitchell Dering — the Fairdealing man who recently shot a world record-sized fish — says his successful shot came down to luck.
“I got off work that day and went out to one of the ditches in Duck Creek and just got lucky honestly,” Dering told the state department in an April 10 news release.
He’s used to shooting a lot of smaller fish while bowfishing, but during his March 14 outing, he caught something a bit bigger.
“I knew it was a bullhead, but didn’t know if was a brown bullhead,” he said in the release. “But I knew it was large for its size.”
The next day, he contacted the MDC Southeast Regional Office and requested that his fish be weighed on a certified scale.
Staff confirmed he had shot a 4-pound brown bullhead while at Duck Creek Ditch #105 — qualifying him for state and world records, officials said.
In Missouri, his catch beat out a 2-pound, 7-ounce fish that Jerry D. Cox caught from Wappapello Lake in May 1994, records show. The bowfishing world record for a brown bullhead fish weighed 3 pounds, 4 ounces.
“That’s honestly pretty awesome,” Dering said. “I’ve bowfished for quite awhile. We’ve won a few tournaments in Kentucky and Tennessee and have placed in numerous other tournaments. That’s cool, I didn’t know that!”
He plans to mount his brown bullhead — and has his eyes set on breaking even more records.
“I’ve never mounted anything before,” he told state officials. “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!”
Duck Creek Conservation Area and nearby Mingo National Wildlife Refuge are the only confirmed locations with “self-sustaining natural population of brown bullheads,” officials said.
Duck Creek Conservation Area is in the southeast corner of Missouri.
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