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