New Missouri record fish beats the old mark

Robert Audrain III’s new Missouri record fish beat the old mark by 33 percent.

The St. Louis angler’s 4-ounce longear sunfish eclipsed the previous record longear by a whole ounce.

“It’s funny because most of my friends thought it was a joke,” Audrain said, laughing. “Because of the fish’s size, they really didn’t think that it was a record.”

The Missouri Department of Conservation confirmed the new record, which was caught July 3 while Audrain was fishing in a private pond in Franklin County.

“I was fishing off my father-in-law’s dock at a private lake a little south of Eureka,” Audrain said, in an MDC news release. “I was with my 12-year-old son and we knew there was some good-sized sunfish in the lake. I was using my handline and it was the first line I threw in when we caught the fish.”

The sunfish was weighed on a certified scale at MDC’s