Monster Shellcracker Weighs Almost 5 Pounds!

Kenneth Carver couldn’t believe his eyes. The net that had been pulled from a drained 3 1/2-acre Coffee County pond just south of Douglas contained a few wiggling catfish, several nice bass and an absolute monster of a bream. 

The bulging, big-as-a-platter bream measured 15 inches long, 9 1/2 inches across and about 4 inches thick. 

The fish was inspected by Wildlife Resources Division Fisheries Biologist Mike Geihsler at Bowen’s Mill. Mike identified the fish as a redear bream—or shellcracker. 

The next day the fish was weighed on certified scales at 4-lbs., 10-ozs. — 8 ounces above the state record.

The platter-sized shellcracker, seined out of a drained Coffee County pond by Kenneth Carver of Douglas, measured 15 inches long and was about 4 inches thick.

The current Georgia rod-and-reel state record for shellcracker is held by a 4-lb., 2-oz. fish caught in 1995 by Pat Lawrence from a slough off the Savannah River. Since the Coffee County bream was netted, it does not replace Pat’s record shellcracker.

The world-record shellcracker, according the International Game Fish Association, was caught at Santee-Cooper in South Carolina in 1998 and weighed 5-lbs., 4-ozs.