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7/5/2009 3:34 AM

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By Mike Leggett,

Cox newspapers

LOCKHART, Texas - Thirty-four anglers came from around the world to the annual carp derby on Lady Bird Lake in March, but it took just one fish to set the carp world to spinning.

Kevin Crawford didn't win the eighth annual Austin Challenge; he finished third overall. But his biggest fish turned out to be a state record 43-pound, 12-ounce common carp.

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Interestingly, the fish apparently was the same one that set the previous record of 43 pounds, 2 ounces - caught three years ago in the same event.

Carp experts with the sponsoring Carp Anglers Group say they have compared unique scale and body markings from photographs and have determined it is the same fish.

Al St. Cyr caught the carp the first time, when it won the angler a huge cash prize of $250,000 for a state record caught during the tournament.

"This is a special case, but people actually catch the same carp multiple times all the time," said Louis Cook, the Philadelphia-based president of the Carp Anglers Group. "This one had a distinctive scale pattern in one place on its tail and another on the head, but it was the size of the fish that caused people to start looking at it."

It makes the fish a two-time state record carp.

"I have a couple of friends in (Washington) D.C. who have caught the same carp six times over seven years," Cook said. Since all the fish are released alive, catching one a second time is routine to the trophy carp anglers, he said.

Michael Bates of San Antonio was first in this year's tournament with a total catch of 533 pounds, 15 ounces, followed by Pieter and Dylan Marais, also of San Antonio, with 420 pounds, 2 ounces. Crawford and partner Scott Ferguson finished third with 321-3 pounds.

The carp anglers release all their fish alive in the lake where they were caught, and Crawford's fish was released to swim again.

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