Rarely is a trophy fish so easy to land. An animal control officer in the United States recently hauled in a 27kg carp that was lying in a ditch.
A man out for a walk in Olanthe last week spotted the fish and called police, city animal control officer Jamie Schmidt said on Tuesday.
The man estimated the fish at over four feet long (1.22m) - and he was not telling a whopper, said Schmidt, who responded to the call in suburban Kansas City.
The carp lay dead in a roadside ditch that connects to a lake and apparently swam there when heavy rain caused flooding, she said.
"When the guy said it was four foot, I thought 'Well, most men tell fish stories' and I thought it wasn't going to be even close to that. I was very shocked."
Schmidt said the fish measured about 3.5 feet (1.06m) long and weighed 27kg). It was a grass carp, said Lucas Kowalewski, fisheries biologist for the Kansas Department of Parks, Wildlife and Tourism.
The Kansas record for grass carp caught by angling is 35kg, according to department records.
Schmidt said the fish had not decomposed and was lying in shallow water. She put plastic trash bags around the fish to drag it to her vehicle, where she loaded it into a kennel that has a power lift.
After a photo the fish met a quick demise, she said.
"We treated it like any other dead animal. We put it into our incinerator."
