At this time last year, Barry Parker didn’t even know that tilapia, fish native to Africa that are typically found in warmer climates, were in Old Hickory Lake.
Today the Lafayette resident owns the record for the largest tilapia caught in the state.
After hearing last spring that tilapia had been found in Old Hickory, particularly near the Gallatin Steam Plant, since 2010, Parker and his wife, Phyllis, started fishing for them a couple of weeks before Christmas.
They caught 35 the first time they went and made five more trips over the next two weeks, catching big stringers each time.
Then two days after Christmas Day, the Parkers headed back to the steam plant area where the tilapia started gobbling up the night crawlers the couple was using as bait.
After about an hour on the water, Barry, 53, hooked a fish that he wasn’t sure was a tilapia. It tugged harder on his line, diving deep and bending his rod more than any of the hundreds of tilapia he had caught to that point.
“It felt like it was something else,” Parker said. “I didn’t know if it was a different kind of fish or what. He put up a lot more fight than those others.”
Parker said he fought the fish for about 15 minutes before finally getting it to the side of his boat where Phyllis was able to scoop it up with a net.
“If it hadn’t been for (Phyllis) that day with the landing net, I probably never would have got him in the boat,” Parker said.
The fish turned out to be a tilapia, but not like any Parker ever had caught. In fact, it wasn’t like any tilapia that ever had been caught before in the state.
It weighed 6 pounds, 5.5 ounces and measured 22.5 inches. The previous record tilapia also was caught in Old Hickory and weighed 4 pounds, 14 ounces.
“At the moment when I caught it I didn’t know it was the record, but I looked in the (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) record book and saw that it was,” Parker said.
Parker notified TWRA Region II fishery manager Todd St. John about his catch, filled out all the paperwork for the new record last Thursday and has been notified that a certificate declaring the record is in the mail.
“It’s in the book and I’m pretty happy about that,” Parker said.
Parker gave the fish to Floyd Poindexter, who is having it mounted and will put it on display at Poindexter Bait Co. in Gallatin.
“That way more people will get to enjoy seeing it,” Parker said.
The Parkers caught a total of 75 tilapia that same day.
"They're kind of like crappie," Parker said. "They're good to eat. They put up a pretty good fight, especially the bigger ones. They put up a real good fight."
There is no limit on tilapia since they are a non-native, invasive species on Old Hickory. Tilapia usually are found in brackish water.
Tilapia are able to survive in that area, TWRA officials say, because of the warm water discharge that comes from the steam plant and keeps the temperature level above 45 degrees.
“We believe (tilapia ) were introduced to Old Hickory by escaping from farm ponds during the big flood of 2010,” St. John said. “Tilapia have been used by private pond owners to provide alternate forage for largemouth bass, aid in vegetation control and as a food source. We do not encourage these farm pond stockings since escape and the introduction to other water bodies is always possible.”
Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 and on Twitter @MikeOrganWriter.
