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Texas Men Busted With 173 Crappies Over Legally Permitted Amount, Facing Charges and Restitution

Two men in Texas crossed the line recently by transporting more than 173 fish over the legal possession limit.

The Men Had 350 Fillets

Texas game wardens in Upshur County confiscated 350 crappie fillets from the men after receiving an anonymous tip. The tipster told them a large amount of fish had been cleaned and dumped at Lake O’ the Pines.

In Texas, the daily bag limit for crappies is 25 per individual, Fox News reports. Anglers can have twice the daily bag limit, which is still far below the number of fish the men were carting around with them.

According to the wardens’ Facebook post, multiple charges and civil restitution are pending. 

The wardens donated the crappie fillets to multiple families in the area. 

East Texas Lake Country

Lake O’ the Pines is a reservoir near the Texas border with Louisiana. It’s located on Big Cypress Bayou. It is also known as the habitat for legendary catfish.

Further, the lakes of east Texas are the setting for countless stories of oversized fish. And they have lured fishermen determined to catch some of the monstrous creatures.

“A lot of people have no knowledge of these fish – ‘unless we see it, we don’t believe it,’” angler Don Allen told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “I’m on a crusade.”

But Jeff Henson, a biologist with the Inland Fisheries Division of the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, told the paper the stories of monster fish are mostly apocryphal. 

“We don’t have a fish that gets anywhere near that size in Texas,” he said. “I’d give the fishermen that they probably caught a large fish and kind of blew it out of proportion. It’s kind of a typical fish tale.”

Additionally, the fish the wardens confiscated at Lake O’ the Pines were mostly normal-sized. But the size of their haul certainly has people talking.