Fisherman In Arkansas Lands Incredibly Rare “One-in-a-million” Catch On Beaver Lake

Almost everyone has wasted an hour or two daydreaming about winning the lottery, thinking about what they would do with the money...the places they’d go, the cars they’d buy, and the family members they’d ignore.

But if you’re a true outdoorsman, you might waste your time daydreaming about catching rare fish.

An Arkansas angler named Josh Rogers reeled in an extremely rare fish last month at Beaver Lake in the Ozark Highlands. He knew right away that he caught a largemouth bass, but he wondered why the fish had a golden hue. He had never seen anything like it.

There were two thoughts going through his mind:

“The mid-lake area on down is uncharacteristically muddy now, and I know that bass get light-colored when they are in the mud. But when I looked at the mouth and gills, I wondered if he was sick. My buddy I was fishing with said, ‘Surely it’s not something he’s eating that would turn him that color.’”

He released the fish back in the water, not realizing just how rare the catch was. Thankfully, he took photos first, and when those photos spread online, Rogers realized he probably shouldn’t have thrown it back in the water.

AGFC biologist Jon Stein described the catch as being akin to hitting the Powerball, only without the millions of dollars.

“Josh needs to buy a lottery ticket because he caught one fish in a million,” Stein told reporters.

“Stein says the gold-colored largemouth bass was a genetic anomaly and has what is known as Xanthochromism, which is the loss of darker pigment with the pigmentation replaced with yellow, which occurs naturally but very rarely.”

Rogers plans to have a replica made through photographs, so that he has something to remember it by.

And who knows, maybe it’s a good thing he released it. If they are truly that rare, maybe they should remain in the wild, you know? Plus, with that golden hue, that fish is probably pulling all kinds of game underwater.