Richard Elliott thought he’d seen it all in his nearly five decades of fishing, but last week, he caught a fish he’d never, ever seen before. “I’m 65 now and I’ve never seen a grass carp. I was hoping I never would see one. We don’t want them in Ontario,” said Elliott. Only 33 of these invasive species have been caught on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes waters since 2012, and only a handful of those were caught in Lake Huron. This may also have been the largest grass carp ever caught in the Canadian Great Lakes, Elliott believes. At more than 48 inches long and 30 inches around its belly, this behemoth weighed more than 58 pounds. “I was out fishing with a buddy’s wife, I was pretty excited about it, saying like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ And she just kind of said, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ But then when the crew got here and started and saw the excitement, she goes, like, ‘Man, this is a big deal, you know?’ I do think it’s a big deal,” said Elliott. Elliott immediately alerted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who sent a crew down that day. They took samples and plan to return to the area next month to study the area off the shores of the Bruce Power nuclear plant, where Elliott found the grass carp, belly up, but still alive. “To see one that big was kind of awesome,” he said. Elliott concedes it is an amazing discovery, but not one he wanted to make. Grass carp are an invasive species. They’ve invaded some U.S. waterways, causing environmental damage by eating all the vegetation usually eaten by native fish. So, it’s not a fish that fishermen want to catch anywhere, let alone in Lake Huron. “It’s just not a good thing to have. They do really outcompete our native species, because they’re not supposed to be here. There’s no predators for them. They just grow like crazy,” said Elliott. Elliott said while he’s now got an amazing story to tell about the time he caught one of the biggest, if not the biggest, grass carp ever caught in the Great Lakes. He’s been told by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that he may just find another one soon enough. “There is a camera out here that they’ve had on different times, and they actually have video of two of them. So there’s at least one more here,” said Elliott.
