ODD BY ANY MEASURE
Young angler’s crappie wasn’t a record for Illinois, but it’s a wild one for sure
Kyle Tepper knew. “As soon as I set the hook, I told my buddy, ‘Grab the net — this is not a bass,’ ” he said.
Tepper was shore fishing for crappie with Rick Hamann and Kyle Anderson at a lake in the Chain O’Lakes area March 4 when he hooked into a freak crappie on a pearl Z-Man Shad FryZ.
“It is a very large crappie,” he said — an understatement.
This one was 19½ inches with a girth of 17¼ inches.
“As soon as the 19 was landed and in the net, the bobber went down on a 17½,” he said. “We probably caught 10 over 14 inches over that day, and another 60.”
Even among those, this was a freak — more like something from Mississippi. Tepper took it to his workplace, Triangle Sports & Marine in Antioch, where it was weighed at 3½ pounds.
The Illinois crappie records are remarkably similar in weight: hybrid — 4 pounds, 8.8 ounces, caught by Ryan Povolish, March 28, 2017, Kinkaid Lake; black — 4-8, John Hampton, May 15, 1976, Rend Lake; and white — 4-7, Kevin Dennis, April 8, 1973, Morgan County farm pond.
Tepper’s was not a state record, but it was special for northern Illinois.
“Hybrid, I can say, almost for certain,” Tepper said. “It had the genetics of white crappie but looks like a black crappie from all the research I’ve done.”
Tepper is a young but experienced multi-species angler. I met him when he and Anderson, both freshmen at the time, had Antioch in third place at the Illinois High School Association state finals for bass fishing after Day 1 in 2018 at Carlyle Lake. They finished fourth.
Tepper thinking his big crappie was a hybrid made me remember the wait when Povolish caught his crappie. It was going to be an Illinois record. The question was which one. It looked like a black crappie, but genetic testing from fin clips by the Illinois Natural History Survey proved it was a hybrid.
According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Mark Davis, an INHS conservation biologist, noted, “The genetics show that the mother of the record fish was a black crappie, while the father was either a white or a hybrid crappie.”
So I messaged Kevin Irons, Illinois’ assistant fisheries chief.
“There certainly are different levels of hybrids, just as you describe, F1, F2 . . . Fx,” he responded. “Sometimes it looks like a hybrid and sometimes not — depends on those things. I would not assume unless some feature is ‘off.’ A fin clip and genetics is the only way for sure. While hybrid vigor is a thing, I would not assume in these cases . ... [Tepper’s is a] wonderful fish regardless!”
Tepper treated it that way, saying, “I might do a replica. I let him go. I have a video of it.”
Wild things
While I picked night crawlers in falling slush Friday on my morning ramble with Lady, I noticed many robins on the wet road. They had adapted and were taking easy pickings. Not sure if picking worms in traffic is a good adaptation.
Stray cast
Are honchos at Major League Fishing or B.A.S.S. looking at the World Baseball Classic and brainstorming?
The expanded World Cup in North America got even more supersized Tuesday.
The governing body of soccer increased the size of the 2026 tournament for the second time — six years after the first — by approving a bigger group stage for the inaugural 48-team event.
By retaining groups of four teams instead of moving to three, FIFA has created a 104game schedule that will last nearly six weeks in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The final is scheduled for July 19.
The 16 host cities — 11 in the United States, three in Mexico and two in Canada — now have 24 extra games to stage on top of the 80 they already had for the inaugural 48-team tournament.
Adding about 1.5 million more tickets will also further fuel FIFA’s expected record revenue of at least $11 billion through 2026 from a tournament that will rely on using highrevenue NFL stadiums.
FIFA said the decision followed a “thorough review that considered sporting integrity, player welfare, team travel, commercial and sporting attractiveness, as well as team and fan experience.”
The latest push by FIFA president Gianni Infantino for more games and bigger events in a congested calendar will likely provoke more concern among stakeholders such as domestic leagues and players’ union FIFPRO. They have long felt isolated from talks on soccer’s future.
The six-week World Cup will start one year after FIFA launches a 32-team Club World Cup, which could also be staged in North America to test tournament logistics. The Champions League in Europe also has a new format with more teams and games in the 2024-25 season.
The new World Cup format will have 12 groups of four teams instead of 16 groups of three, the plan chosen in 2017. Both options were to go to a 32-team knockout round.
The format guarantees every World Cup team will play a minimum of three times instead of two, adding up to a stacked group stage totaling 72 games. The four semifinalists will play eight matches, one more than last year in Qatar.
The entire 2022 World Cup in Qatar amounted to 64 games in the seventh and last edition of the 32-team format. The 1998 World Cup in France was the first with 32 teams.
The extra 24 games should drive up the price of sponsor deals and broadcasting deals not yet signed. However, some key broadcast markets are already signed, including in the United States, Brazil and the Middle East.
One downside of the 48-team format is the unbalanced nature of the 32 teams that will advance. Eight of the 12 third-place teams will move on, creating uncertainty for some teams placing third in a group not knowing if they will advance until matches are completed days later.
FIFA also explained how teams will enter the 2025 Club World Cup, including continental champions in each season from 2021-24. That means Chelsea, Real Madrid, Palmeiras, Flamengo and Seattle Sounders already secured their places.
Europe’s 12 entries can also be decided by a ranking system based on the same fouryear period, with a cap of two teams per country advancing with exemptions for continental champions.
FIFA also plans to create another new competition starting annually in 2024 for continental champions. The Champions League winner in Europe will play the winner of playoffs featuring the other continental champions.