The next world record goldfish just may come from the most unlikely of places…Lake Tahoe.
But if you want to get in on the action, you had better hurry because state wildlife officials are in the process of trying to rid the lake of several non-native invasive species.
Goldfish, largemouth bass, bluegill and crappie have all been illegally dumped into Tahoe over the years. While you wouldn’t expect these warm water species to thrive in the cold, clear waters of Tahoe, they have found a shallow, weedy sanctuary in the environmental abomination that is the South Shore’s Tahoe Keys.
When they built the Tahoe Keys, they basically filled in a very productive estuary and marsh and turned it into a housing development and marina. The resulting shallow warm water now doesn’t get flushed out by the upper Truckee River and have become a haven for warmwater invasive species.
When I used to run a six-pack charterboat out of the Keys back in the day, I would catch bass & crappie off the docks in the afternoons after my charters. There were some big bass in there, too — I saw largemouth to 10 plus pounds and crappie in the 2-pound class.
To read more about this issue, check out the Sac Bee
Mike McNeilly says
It seems nothing short of arbitrary to remove the warm water invasives from Lake Tahoe. The Tahoe ecosystem has never been the same since the silver rush in the Comstock when logging went rampant in the Tahoe Basin. Since that time, there has been a history of man altering the ecosystem, and this attempt to remove warm water invasives seems like putting out a tire fire with a spray bottle to me. The entire Tahoe food chain was forever altered with the introduction of mysis shrimp. Now, the non native mackinaw population reaches sexual maturity at a younger age fueled by a non native food source. Every spring, non native rainbow trout spawn in Tahoe’s tributaries, and every fall brown trout do as well. The only native gamefish left in the lake is a relic population of mountain whitefish that are clinging to their existence. The native Lahontan Cutts have been gone for a hundred years, and the ecosystem is too altered to ever be suitable habitat for them again. Removing goldfish seems like treating cancer with a salt tablet.
JD says
Agreed! There’s talk of trying to remove all bows, macks, browns etc and reintroducing cutthroat. Good luck with that one…
jerry k says
Looks like good bait for mac’s!
stefano flocchini says
I might nee a bigger tank.
Virgil says
Probably don’t have to go too far and fine for them or use 6x tippet :-)
Look at this goldfish a Frenchman caught: 30 pounds!
http://www.gofishn.com/gofishn/6122-french-fisherman-catches-30-pound-goldfish/
JD says
I’ve seen that pic before…and I may have even run it here at some point, but still…Holy giant goldfish, Batman! That thing is huge!