Two brothers will find their names in the Texas record books after landing the largest black and white crappies ever caught and recorded in the Concho River. Mason and Michael Schwartz landed the pending-record fish in early March, a Facebook post from Texas Parks & Wildlife (TPW) reports.
According to TPW, Mason caught Concho’s largest black crappie, weighing 1.4 pounds and measuring 12.5 inches. Michael’s white crappie are similar in size, weighing 1.25 pounds and reaching over 13 inches in length.
“I caught mine on Tuesday (March 5) on a topwater popper,” Mason Schwartz said Field and Stream. “Michael caught his future on a spinnerbait. We were really bass fishing, and they were biting our bass lures.”
Black and white crappie inhabit inland waters throughout much of the Lone Star State. Besides the obvious differences in color and pattern, the two types of crappie can be distinguished by their preferences for different types of habitat. Black crappie tend to hold tight to heavy cover, for example, while schools of white crappie often suspend in the water column above submerged tree limbs and other types of structure.
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The Concho River is home to several other gamefish species including largemouth and striped bass, flathead catfish, rainbow trout, and red-breasted sunfish. The previous waterbody record for white crappie in the Concho weighed .82 ounces and measured 12.5 inches. T. Dean McIntruff landed that fish on the Glover River crawdad pattern in 2007. Mason Schwartz’s black crappie was the first record for the species identified by TPW in the Concho River.
