Jesse Miller, 29, had to work the evening of April 1, but he snuck in some fishing before starting his shift as a delivery driver. Miller went to a spot on the bank of the Great Miami River near Middletown, Ohio. He put out a lightweight rod with a baited minnow under a float, and then he started casting with a rod rigged for smallmouth.
“I’d made a few casts and happened to look over at my other rod and saw the float go under,” Miller tells Outdoor Life. “It was in a spot near the wall of an old river dam. I got to the rod with the float, and there was a heavy fish on it.”
Miller says the fight wasn’t long. But the fish was bigger than he expected when he brought it up near the wall to land it.
“I almost lost it because where I was standing on shore was about three feet from the old dam wall, and the fish was hard to grab,” says Miller. “I finally got it, and at first, I thought it was a white bass because it was so big.
“But the mouth was huge and I knew then it was a crappie. It looked like a white crappie on one side but different on the other side. I started counting the dorsal spines of the fish to see what kind of crappie it was, and then I figured maybe it was a hybrid.”
That’s when Miller gathered his gear, dashed to his car with his fish, and headed to a nearby Kroger store to have it weighed on certified scales. The fish weighed 4.30 pounds. But when Miller got home, he looked up the rules for submitting a state record. He saw that all fish must be weighed on certified scales and have an official printed certificate of weight. The rules also require witnesses to be present at the weigh-in, with their signatures on the record application.
So, Miller kept the fish alive in a cooler full of water and drove with his crappie to Zink Meat Market in the nearby town of Franklin. The scale showed 4.27 pounds, and he got a printed receipt and witness signatures.
“They clarified that this crappie is right around 11-12 years old based on the scales,” Miller explains in a TikTok video of the inspection process. “They also clarified that her 6 dorsal spikes say white crappie, but her pattern and dimensions lean toward hybrid.”
Miller then learned that Ohio did not have a record category for hybrid crappies — only white crappies and black crappies. He knew he had to have his fish inspected by state biologists, who would officially determine the species.
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“It took a week for me to get to the Ohio DNR office in Xenia so biologists could look at my fish, so I had to freeze it,” he said. “When I got to the Xenia office state biologists Kipp Brown and Mike Porto verified it was a hybrid crappie. They sent their findings to Fred Snyder the chairman of the Outdoor Writers of Ohio, who keep state fishing records.”
Miller says a committee from OWO reviewed the state biologists report on his hybrid crappie and established a new state record category for the species. Because Miller’s fish is the first hybrid crappie submitted to OWO, it’s almost assured to become the first official state-record hybrid crappie.