Kansas is known far and wide for its storied history of big buffalo, but one “buffalo” will be remembered for entirely different reasons – a smallmouth buffalo, that is. According to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, Topeka resident, Thayne Miller, has just set the new Kansas state record for the largest smallmouth buffalo caught in Kansas. The fish, which weighed 64.75 pounds, measured 45.25 inches long and had a total girth or circumference of 35 inches. Miller unearthed the record-size fish from Clinton Reservoir, five miles west of Lawrence on K-10 Highway, using bowfishing equipment. The previous Kansas state record for a smallmouth buffalo was set in 1979 by Scott Butler of Lawrence when he reeled in a 51-pound, 41-inch-long smallmouth buffalo from a private farm pond in Douglas County.
