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| Springboro police Officer Dale Richter holds a 5-foot-long carp found on the side of the road near the intersection of Remick Boulevard and Settler's Walk Road on Wednesday, June 2, 2010. |
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Mystery Roadkill - 5ft Carp
Dayton Daily News
Tue June 1, 2010
Area: Cincinnati
SPRINGBORO, Ohio - Springboro road crews responded to an unusual reported roadkill this morning, June 2: a nearly 5-foot fish found by the side of the road.
The call came in around 7:20 a.m. from a man out for his morning walk, according to Springboro emergency dispatchers. He found the creature by the side of a roundabout at the intersection of Remick Boulevard and Settler's Walk Road.
"That's probably the biggest carp I've ever seen," said Springboro Police Officer Dale Richter, speculating some local angler has a fish story his friends and family will never believe - one that got away on the road.
"I would just assume someone was late night fishing last night and it probably fell off the back of his truck," Richter said. "There's going to be a very unhappy fisherman, somewhere."
As fish stories go, there is some disagreement over the size of the catch. Richter said he did not measure the fish, but "stepped it off" with his 11-inch boot, and it came close to five feet long.
It could be a record if the fish were a common carp, but it's not, according to Doug Maloney, fish management supervisor with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Maloney was shown a picture and said the fish is a grass carp, also known as a White Amur.
"They are stocked in ponds in Ohio because they have a fondness for eating underwater plants," Maloney said. "The mostly likely explanation of where this critter came from, if he was found in southwest Ohio, is he most likely came out of a pond."
Maloney said the fish can get up to 70 pounds in their native Asia.
"This is a good size one," he said. "There's no records kept for this species, because they're so rarely caught by fishermen"
Maloney said they do occasionally escape from ponds into larger lakes and rivers, but they usually don't escape by land. "How it got out of that pond is anyone's guess."
"I don't think it's the missing link," he said jokingly. "It didn't pop out of the sewer either. It was too big for the sewer grate."
Richter said the dead fish hadn't started to stink yet, but the spectacle was slowing the morning commute for some people in the area. They cleaned it up before neighborhood cats began to swarm, he said.
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