Yongfeng Tian, a retired businessman from Bensonhurst, said his prize-winning white perch was all “luck.”
By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
Yongfeng Tian started fishing in 2015, after a friend convinced him to make the drive from Bensonhurst so they could try their luck in the reservoirs upstate.
At the boat rental shop, Tian found a book listing all of New York State’s fishing records. Many have held for decades — Northern Pike (1940), Common Carp (1995), Lake Trout (2003) — but he promised himself that his name would be in there too, one day.
“That’s been my dream,” Tian, 48, said in a phone call this week. “For 10 years, I kept fishing and fishing — it’s so hard, you know? A state record is so hard to break.”
On a breezy Sunday this past November, Tian woke up before dawn to leave Brooklyn ahead of rush hour, arriving at Cross River Reservoir in Westchester around 7 a.m. His friend had stayed home, but he wanted to be on the water; it had become a habit. He pulled out his fish finder, a sonar tool that creates an underwater map, and set out to catch some crappie or white perch.
It was a typical day: a couple bites, but nothing revolutionary. By the time 2 p.m. rolled around, Tian was getting ready to pack up. But as he angled his boat back to shore, the sensor picked up a whole school of mystery fish, 30 feet below.
Tian’s fish finder picked up a school of fish (the orange clump above) right as he was planning to head home.
Tian dropped his Jack, a popular brand of fishing lure, and immediately felt his line go taut. When he reeled it in, he was staring at a large white perch. “Wow,” he texted his friend. At home, the scales confirmed what he had suspected — his 3-pound, 4-ounce catch was a record-breaker.
“I believe that’s luck,” Tian said. “You keep fishing, and you get some luck.”
The previous record, three ounces lighter, was set in 1991 in Lake Oscaletta. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, white perch — technically a species of bass, not perch — are commonly found throughout the state, including the Hudson River.
The DEC lists 40 fish on its recently-revamped Angler Achievement Awards Program, which now allows participants to submit entries through an app. In addition to white perch, three other records have been set this year: brook trout, fallfish, and a monstrous 37-pound, 9-ounce channel catfish.
As for Tian, his white perch is sitting in his fridge. He’s looking for a taxidermy studio that can preserve it as a trophy, in what’s known as a “skin mount.”
But even though the Bensonhurster’s decade-long dream has been realized, he plans to continue his trips to the reservoirs. When asked why, Tian is momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s a good question.”
After a beat, the answer comes in an excited rivulet of words. “The fish, it’s so hard to get it. You study, you learn a lot, you have your experiments. You add a lot of knowledge of fish. You need to know about the fish — where they stay, what they eat. You need to know a lot of things.”
“Then you get a fish,” he said. “And when you’ve got your fish, you’re happy.”
