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.

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Missouri Department of Conservation
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