The Official Unofficial U.S. Common Carp Record

It was no accident. Lennox is one of the small, secretive band of individuals who target trophy carp—fish of 40 pounds and upwards—and they’re as obsessive and maniacal in their pursuit as any group of anglers in US fishing.

When Pennsylvania-based carp specialist Yuriy Nesterov identified a small overlooked park lake with high potential, he fished it constantly for a year without a single bite. He was eventually rewarded with the first documented catch of a 30-, 40-, and 50-pounder in one session.

Olivier Gandzadi has spent decades solo-pioneering the carp potential of the massive Columbia River, from the tidal reaches all the way to the Snake River, based on nothing but his own experience.

Fishing bum Al St. Cyr moved house to be closer to Lady Bird Lake in the middle of Austin, Texas, when he heard it was scheduled to host a trophy carp competition and then spent months chumming the water with a specially formulated carp bait imported from England. He was motivated by a huge cash prize put up by The American Carp Society (and naively underwritten by Lloyds of London), for any angler breaking the Texas state record during the tournament. He managed to do it with a fish of over 43 pounds, pocketing a cool $250,000.

Scott Lennox, a 35-year-old ex-international rugby player and transplant to the Bay Area from England, wasn’t even aware carp existed in the U.S. until a few years ago. He’d fished for the species since childhood with his brother, a well-known U.K. carp angler, but it wasn’t until he spotted another fisherman at a local pond with a distinctive European carp setup that he began to get back into the sport.

“Meeting Nico turned out to be one of the luckiest fishing encounters of my life,” Scott said. “After we got talking, he shared the location of a nearby city lake where he’d caught carp up to 20 pounds. On just my second trip there, I was fortunate enough to land a 20-pounder myself. At that point, I was really back into it, and I fished that lake about 40 times, pretty soon getting to know a small, informal group of guys who carp fished locally and shared information.”

There’s very little written content or reliable historical record to go on if you’re serious about tracking down big carp. Many regular fishermen either struggle to properly identify the species, or have no idea how big they can actually grow, so gaining access to informed local knowledge is key. It’s what led Scott to the water that would eventually break the record.

Carp fishing requires special tackle. Craig Buddo

“In the winter of 2024, things really started to come together,” he said. “I’d heard reports of carp being caught in nearby water, which would be the largest lake I’d ever fished. There were rumors of occasional really big fish coming out of it, like an upper 40 or 50. It’s a very fertile water, with lots of invertebrates, snails, crawfish, and forage fish.”

Carp angling is typically done from the shore, and one big downside to the lake is that it has very little foot access. When his first spot didn’t produce after a couple of trips, Scott committed to hiking one and a half hours around the lake to a more promising spot, carrying all the gear he needed for a multiple-day camping and fishing session.

The biggest and wariest carp are often nocturnal feeders, so keen carpers usually fish multiple rods through the night. Some use custom landing nets and cushioned mats to lay the fish on, rod holders with built-in electronic alarms, serious amounts of chum, and a myriad of other customized camping items and tackle. One of the hottest gadgets in European carp angling is, unsurprisingly, a power-assisted wheelbarrow to cart it all around in.

That isn’t Scott’s approach. He’d already pared down his gear to an absolute minimum after a few seasons of using a bike to access local lakes, and he was used to roughing it from days spent hiking into the harsh backcountry of Cyprus, where he lived for a while, in search of quiet fishing spots. In California, he fished through the night close to his rods from a cheap camping chair.

The effort paid off. He landed his first fish from the lake at the new spot: a dark, hard-fighting 23-pounder and went on to catch more than two dozen fish over the summer and fall, up to 36 pounds.

Lennox caught this 29-pounder before smashing his personal best record.

To coincide with his birthday, he planned a four-day return trip beginning Saturday, December 20th, 2025. Two days in, he caught just a single 29-pounder, but unbeknownst to Scott a group of giant fish moved into the water in front of him, attracted by the flavored bait he was using.

Monday morning his bite alarm ripped to life and line began pouring off the spool. After a violent first run, the fight settled into a slow, steady battle before he slipped the net under a huge common carp of just over 50 pounds, smashing his personal best for the species by 14 pounds.

Probably fewer than 20 people have caught a carp over 50 pounds in the U.S., so Scott was understandably ecstatic, viewing the rest of the session as a victory lap:

“My fishing buddy Andrii Anpilogov came out the next day with his teenage son Mark, and I said to him: ‘How do I prove it wasn’t luck?’ He replied, ‘You just have to catch another one,’ and we both laughed, knowing the chances were almost zero.”

About 30 minutes after that conversation, he got another screaming run. Though it felt like a very substantial fish, he thought maybe it had picked up some weed during the fight.

“I actually said to Andrii, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think it’s very big.’ There aren’t a lot of snags or things to worry about in this spot, so I just gave it room to run around and tire itself out for what felt like about 15 minutes.”

Andrii helped out with the netting and weighing and probably recalls the moment more clearly than Scott:

“It actually took three or so attempts to get the fish into the net. It just didn’t want to fit: that was the moment when it became clear that we’d got a monster. And that was also the moment when Scott finally showed some emotion. Once we got the fish onto the unhooking mat, we both just started laughing like crazy.”

The fish weighed 64.22 pounds on a scale that was later certified by the IGFA (actually testing a few ounces light consistently across test weights between 12 and 100 pounds) and beat the old widely accepted U.S. record by more than two pounds.

Lennox with a rare fully scaled mirror.

There are admittedly a few problems with establishing “official” carp records in the U.S., including the reliability and proper documentation of legacy state records. Some states do not record any carp records, while others do not differentiate between fish caught on rod-and-reel and bow or spear. There is also an extreme reluctance among keen carp anglers to tip off the bowfishing community about specific locations, so some claims are difficult to verify. (Scott’s lake is deliberately not named for that reason.)

But in the near 150-year history of the species being introduced to America, his fish stands as the biggest deliberately angled-for and documented common carp in the U.S. to date.