Blue Springs, Mo. ? Tim Dernosek probably doesn’t need to worry about whether the fishing record he set on May 28 will be broken any time soon.

The common carp he caught at Lake Lotawana topped the previous record by nearly 20 pounds.

Dernosek was bowfishing at 11:15 p.m. when he shot the 55-pound, 1-ounce female common carp. The previous record was a 35-pound, 9-ounce fish taken from Lake Lotawana in May 1999.

“We were testing a new lighting system that my friend put on his boat,” Dernosek said. “We started seeing all these big fish, and I mean big fish. We decided we wouldn’t shoot anything that looked like it wasn’t at least 35 pounds.”

Dernosek, who has been active in archery fishing tournaments for years, has seen huge buffalo and grass carp before, but the biggest common carp he had ever seen until that night was 15 pounds or so.

But that night on Lake Lotawana, they were surrounded by common carp none of which was smaller than 20 pounds. He said he has heard that really big carp come into shallow water only once a year.

“They come up one night and spawn, and then they’re gone for another year,” he said. “We just happened to be there.”

The record fish is in Dernosek’s freezer, waiting to be mounted by a taxidermist.

The Missouri Department of Conservation keeps separate records for fish caught with hand-held poles and those taken by bowfishing and other “alternative methods.”

The pole-and-line record for common carp is 50 pounds, 6 ounces.