Idaho’s lower Snake River in Canyon County is slow-moving and clear, and it has good numbers of large carp, says bowfisherman Riley Farden, who lives nearby in New Plymouth. He and his wife were on the river in his jet-drive jonboat around midday Sunday, and good numbers of carp were milling around.
Farden says he’d already shot 10 to 15 carp that day when he spotted a huge fish holding near the bottom in about four feet of water. He drew his 50-pound compound bow and made a good shot on the carp.
“Then the fish went crazy for a few minutes, and it shattered my arrow,” Farden tells Outdoor Life. “And I couldn’t use my bowfishing reel because the carp was too strong. I had to haul it in by hand and flip it into my boat. I thought I was going to lose it because of that broken arrow.”
Farden knew it was a huge grass carp, and possibly a state bowfishing record. So the couple quit fishing, left the river, and went to get the carp weighed on certified scales. But the Idaho Department of Fish and Game office in Boise is closed on Sundays. And every grocery store they called to try and weigh the fish said it couldn’t handle the carp because it was too big for the scales.
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“I put the fish on ice and took it to the Boise office the next day for weighing and measuring,” says Farden. “But they couldn’t weigh the fish on their small certified scales [either]. They sent me to the state agricultural department about 10 minutes away where they officially weighed and measured my carp.”
A state fisheries official witnessed the carp being weighed at the agricultural department and verified the species as a grass carp. Farden’s fish weighed 67.65 pounds, with a 49-inch length and a 32.75-inch girth.
The carp has been officially recognized by IDFG as a state-record, and the heaviest recorded grass carp taken by any legal means — including bow or rod-and-reel. (Idaho allows archers to take non-native grass carp because they are not classified as a game fish.) Farden’s grass carp smashed the previous bowfishing record, a 39.5-pounder that was also taken from the Snake River, and it easily outweighs the standing rod-and-reel record of 46.7 pounds.
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