Record Hog Sucker Fish Gigged…What’s A Hog Sucker?

If someone came up to you and said we're going gigging for hog suckers, would you know what they were talking about?

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reported that a Poplar Bluff resident recently gigged a record-size northern hog sucker on the Current River in Ripley County.

If you're like me, I wouldn't be able to pick out out a hog sucker and it wouldn't matter if it was a northern or southern species. Now this sounds like something that "the family" participates in because the old record was held by a cousin.

Jeff Rowland of Poplar Bluff became the most recent record-breaking angler in Missouri when he gigged the northern hog sucker. The old weight was a 2-pound, 3-ounce northern hog sucker that was gigged in 2010. The new record-setting fish that was gigged on Oct. 15 weighed 2 pounds, 8 ounces with a length of 18.3 inches.

The fish was gigged using an alernative method. Missouri state-record fish are recognized in two categories: pole-and-line and alternative methods. Alternative methods include: throwlines, trotlines, limb lines, bank lines, jug lines, spearfishing, snagging, snaring, gigging, grabbing, archery, and atlatl.