San Marcos River angler Mike Schlimgen and I hold most of the fly rod fish records on the San Marcos and Blanco rivers. We are forever competing, trying to annihilate each other’s records. Mike’s a tough competitor. He’s extremely accurate with his 4-weight fly rod from the kayak.

On the San Marcos River, Mike holds the fly-rod record for rock bass, channel catfish, gizzard shad, hybrid green sunfish, long ear sunfish and spotted sunfish. My San Marcos records include Guadalupe bass, largemouth bass, bluegill, Rio Grande cichlid, green sunfish and red breast sunfish.

On the Blanco, I have the largemouth bass record, Rio Grande cichlid and green sunfish. Mike owns the realm of channel catfish, bluegill and long ear sunfish.

But the one record that we didn’t own until two weeks ago was the red-ear sunfish. David McCall caught a 1.12-pound, 10.75-inch red-ear in March 2005.

Mike and I have been after that record for years. On a recent afternoon kayak float near Skull Crossing on the San Marcos, Mike landed a 1.37 pound red-ear on his little fly rod.

That’s a big red-ear.

And, not surprising, he caught it on a black wooley bugger.

I fish a surface popper most of the time and red-ears tend to be bottom feeders in deeper water. Snails are their favorite food. So the sinking wooley bugger was just the ticket.

In A.J. McClane’s New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia, he says, “The red-ear is less susceptible to artificial lures than most sunfishes, and consequently, grubs, catalpa worms and earth worms are preferred baits. On rare occasions, the red-ear will take a wet fly or small pan fish bug.”

I guess Mike intersected one of those “rare occasions.”

I have seen a larger red-ear that Bobby Whiteside caught at the junction of the San Marcos and Blanco Rivers. The fish weighed 1.5 pounds but was caught on an ultralite spinning rig.

The largest red-ear that I have landed on our river weighed one pound even.

He actually took a bream popper in shallow water. Another of those “rare occasions.”

The red-ear name comes from the gill flap which has a whitish border with the tip accented with a bright red spot on the males and orange on the females.

The red-ear is better known across the Southern United States as a shellcracker. The fish has highly developed grinding teeth, hence shellcracker , located in their throats which are capable of crushing snails.

Shellcrackers are highly sought after across our southern states. Big bluegills and shellcrackers are usually referred to simply as “bream.” Both get big in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Red-ears of more than four pounds have been caught in these states. Texas red-ears don’t ever approach such size.

Huge Okeechobee Lake in Southern Florida is full of red-ears and a favorite haunt of serious bream fishermen. In the spring red-ears “bed up” to spawn in huge numbers in Okeechobee’s clear water and anglers fill their iceboxes.

Like the bluegill and redbreast, red-ears are an excellent pan fish for eating, because of the plumpness of their bodies they can be kept for food at a smaller size. A red-ear fillet will weigh considerably more than a fillet from a redbreast sunfish of the same length.

Red-ears are popular fish to stock in farm ponds. McClane says, “The red-ear has been widely introduced into farm ponds because it is believed to be less prolific than the bluegill and therefore less likely to cause an overpopulation of stunted fish as rapidly.”

Red-ears in our San Marcos River, like almost all sunfish, will hybridize. Often we catch bluegill-red-ear hybrids. You can run into some real weird sunfish genetic smorgasbords on the San Marcos.

The day Mike caught the red-ear record, I had to pull my kayak from the river early and Mike kept on fishing. A few minutes after I departed he upped his channel catfish record by over a pound.

Some guys are just tough to beat.

Jim Darnell in an ordaineminister and host/producer of the syndicated outdors television show, God’s Great Outdoors. His column appears every Thursday in the Daily Record.