From 1949 until 1971 a large white perch hung in the State House before going into storage. Curators at the Maine State Museum believed the trophy to be the world’s largest white perch. Now those museum officials have a story to tell about the one that got away.

It turns out that the white perch, which was caught by the late Dorathea A. Small of Waterville, was really a largemouth bass. After state fisheries biologists were tipped off by a suspicious curator, they confirmed the mistake.

“When something like this happens, it does turn heads,” said Doug Blodgett at the International Game Fish Association in Dania Beach, Fla., where freshwater and saltwater fish world records are kept. “When a record goes down, it [just] goes into our record lore.”

The fish that Small caught in Messalonskee Lake in 1949 was huge for a white perch, weighing 4 pounds, 12 ounces. It was stuffed by Herbert Welch of Rangeley and presented to the state.

J.R. Phillips, the Maine State Museum director, said Small’s catch has not been displayed since 1971, when the museum exhibitions moved from the State House into the new Cultural Building.

In the past few years, biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife got word of the unusual-looking white perch and investigated it.

“They opened the Plexiglas box that the specimen was in,” Phillips said. “They looked at the back of the fish, and it was quite different from the front. It was very different.”

Largemouth bass are olive green with white bellies, and mouths that extend past the eyes.

White perch are dark gray or green with silver sides and white bellies, and mouths that extend just to the eye.

However, as Blodgett, a native Mainer, pointed out, largemouth bass were not common in Maine back in 1949.

“Probably, it was one of the first largemouth bass in Maine, and the angler had never seen one,” Blodgett said. “The taxidermist was told it was a white perch. The fish not being from Maine, them not having seen a largemouth bass, they made it look like a white perch.”

Blodgett said DIF&W biologist Bob Woodward is sending him measurements of the mounted fish’s eyes, its mouth, and dorsal fin to verify that it is a largemouth bass. At that point, Dorathea Small and Maine will lose the record.

“I want to certainly stress the point that the woman who caught the fish did nothing wrong,” Phillips said. “The family is upset. They feel we are trying to take the record away from Grandma.”

According to Blodgett, the white perch world record will become the 3-pound, 1-ounce perch caught by Edward Tango of Forest Hill Park, N.J., on May 6, 1989 – that is, once it is confirmed that this old record was a mistake.

Nobody seems to be rushing Small out of the record books.

“We want to make sure we have all the information before we retire the fish,” Blodgett said.

Deirdre Fleming covers outdoor sports and recreation in Maine. She can be reached at 990-8250 or at dfleming@bangordailynews.net.