On the morning of 23 December 2025, a 35-year-old former international rugby player named Scott Lennox slid a net under a fish that few American anglers even realise reaches that size: a common carp of 64.22 pounds, hauled from a lake he refuses to name in California.
The catch, detailed this week by MeatEater, beat the previously accepted U.S. common carp benchmark by more than two pounds and was weighed on a scale later certified by the IGFA. UK outlet Angling Times, which also reported the fish at 64 pounds 2 ounces, captured the murk around the milestone: "Although the country's official carp record is hard to track down, it's believed to be around the 67lb mark."
That vagueness is the point. In a country obsessed with largemouth bass, carp records are a patchwork. Some states keep none; others lump rod-and-reel catches in with bowfishing and spearing. As MeatEater noted, fewer than 20 people are thought to have landed a carp over 50 pounds in the U.S. — which makes a documented mid-60s fish remarkable.
Lennox, originally from Shropshire in England, only rediscovered the sport after spotting a European-style carp rig at a local pond. "Meeting Nico turned out to be one of the luckiest fishing encounters of my life," he 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."
The record fish came from a much larger, harder-to-reach water he had scouted for over a year. "In the winter of 2024, things really started to come together," he said. "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." He hiked 90 minutes around the shoreline to fish through the night from a camping chair, bite alarms set, before the giant finally ran.
These anglers are a small, obsessive tribe. The American Carp Society once put up a $250,000 prize — underwritten by Lloyd's of London — for anyone breaking the Texas state record during a tournament on Austin's Lady Bird Lake. Angler Al St. Cyr did exactly that with a fish over 43 pounds, and collected the lot.
For all the secrecy around U.S. waters, the global ceiling is higher still. According to Wired2Fish, the IGFA all-tackle world record common carp weighed 75 pounds 11 ounces and came from Lac de Cassien in France, taken on prepared carp bait and just eight-pound line. Organised carp fishing also has deeper roots here than many realise: the Carp Anglers Group formed in 1993 and the American Carp Society in 2002, and events such as the Wild Carp Classic in New York and Colorado's fly-only Carp Slam now draw committed crowds.
State by state, the numbers keep climbing. On The Water reported that Connecticut's Lake Lillinonah produced a 45.5-pound state record — eclipsing a 45-pound, 5-ounce fish from the same reservoir just a year earlier — while New York's mark sits at 50 pounds 6 ounces and Maryland's at 49.
Lennox's reaction to his own fish was, fittingly, understated. With probably fewer than 20 fifty-pounders ever caught on the continent, he treated the rest of his four-day session as a victory lap.