by Steve Vantreese - The Paducah Sun

It's not often that a regular angler catches a huge fish - and then can't identify it.

That was the case for John West of Henderson who was bass fishing with guide Bill Pierson Thursday on Lake Barkley in the bay near Buzzard Rock Marina. West was retrieving a crankbait when he felt a thud and suddenly a powerful fish began to strip line off his casting reel. West said the drag yielded perhaps 100 yards of 20-pound test line before the fish's run was halted.

"It took me 15 or 20 minutes to land it," West said.

When West eventually did haul in the foul-hooked behemoth, stuck in the tail, it obviously was a fish or rare dimensions. Later examination showed it weighed 72 pounds, was 52 inches long and had a girth of 36 inches. Perhaps more unusual, neither West nor anyone at Buzzard Rock, where he took the fish to be weighed and shown, knew what species it was.

While no fisheries biologist had examined the fish at last report, there may be a handy identity. West Paducah taxidermist Tony English, who was presented with the fish to be mounted, said he believes the whopper is a sheep-head carp or Israeli carp, a genetically-altered carp that was the product and subject of fisheries research in Arkansas or Missouri. The fish reportedly were being raised in experimental ponds that were flooded, allowing the customized carp to escape into the river system in which they apparently have spread.

English said he has some experience with smaller versions of the same kind of fish.

"I didn't know what it was until we started catching a few of them in the river and found out about them," he said. "It's got a buffalo-shaped body, and the fish swim with buffalo, or buffalo swim with them in the rivers. But this one has got a mouth big enough to put a football in," he said of West's catch.

Whatever the identity or origin of the economy-sized fish, its future will be as a mounted specimen to hang on a wall at Buzzard Rock Marina, where the crew reportedly took up a collection to finance its taxidermy.

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