That’s a pretty big fish

The Olathe Police Department today posted a photo of a 60-pound carp that turned up in a drainage ditch near the Persimmon Hill subdivision last week. The fish was dead, but, as you can see, also monstrous and terrifying. 

Police believe the three-and-a-half-foot fish washed out of Persimmon Hill Lake, which is inside the Olathe subdivision. Jamie Schmidt, an animal control officer with the OPD, was tasked with removing this creature from the ditch. The Star reports:

Because the fish was so heavy, she [Schmidt] wrapped it in trash bags and dragged it to her truck. She used a kennel that lowers to the ground to get it into the truck.

“It wasn’t too hard since it was already dead,” she said. “If it had been alive, it would have been more work.”

There had been a lot of rain from last week’s storm, so Schmidt said she believed the fish must have been caught in the current as water spilled from the lake.

While Schmidt said she knew the lake is stocked occasionally, she didn’t expect it to house such a large fish.

Are there more fish this size lurking in man-made lakes in suburban Kansas City? Are they as delicious as they look? How many people will this fish feed? What kind of seasoning should you put on carp? Was this fish trying to tell us something? Was an even larger fish trying to send us a message with this fish? Lots here to ponder.