Arkansas fisherman accidentally catches new state record paddlefish

Northwest Arkansas’ 31,000-acre Beaver Lake has been a top fishing spot for bass, crappie and striper for generations. The lake is known for its hot action for heavyweight striped bass, and big linesiders were the target of fishing buddies Mike Schleeper and Tom Mayberry of Garfield, Arkansas, when they headed out shortly after sunrise Saturday.

“I caught a 30-pound striped bass from Beaver Lake in June, and that’s what we were hoping for that sunny and hot morning,” Schlepper said. Living outside. “We had already caught a few small striped bass: one on live roach, the other on a water plug. We were slow trolling in the lower lake in 30 feet of water. Then I got a hit on the roach.”

The retiree said it didn’t run or fight like some of the big stripers he’s caught. But he knew it was big, and the fish keep moving against heavy bait fishing gear and 20-pound monofilament.

So he turned on his boat, a 24-foot Blue Wave center console, and followed the fish.

He fought the fish for a long time, still thinking it was a striper or maybe a heavy catfish. Finally, 45 minutes after hooking up, he worked the fish to the surface and saw something he’d never seen before: a huge paddlefish.

“I had never seen one alive or up close, but Tom fishes for them in Missouri and he was excited when he saw how big it was,” Schleeper said. “It was wrong hooked and my 5/0 single hook was barely in the fish… Tom had difficulty handling it on the boat and it didn’t fit in our net. I told him to just cut my line. But he knew we had to get it on board and weigh it.”

The fishermen threaded a rope through the fish’s gills and out of its mouth, pulling the fish into their boat. At that moment the hook shot out of his pectoral fin.

“We were really lucky to land it,” Schleeper said. “We then stopped fishing because Tom insisted we have it weighed and measured.”

Schleeper called a friend Hook, line and sinker tackle shop in the nearby town of Rogers, explaining that he had caught a giant paddlefish. His friend contacted the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Shortly thereafter, Eric Gates, an AGFC biologist, called Schlepper. He told him to take the fish to a FedEx office in Rogers where they had a certified scale for the official weight of their catch.

“We drove to the FedEx office and met Eric, who had a big container to put the fish in,” Schleeper says. “We were all standing in line at the FedEx office with the paddlefish in the tub, waiting to use their scales.”

It took about 15 minutes for their turn, and Schleeper says he got strange looks from people in the store.

“However, there was one FedEx employee who was a fisherman, and he was excited to see and weigh the fish.”

The paddlefish weighed 127 pounds (6 ounces) on certified scales, with a length of 66.75 inches and a girth of 44 inches.

Schleeper’s fish easily surpasses the old Arkansas record paddlefish (also known as spoonbill), which weighed 118 pounds. This was noted in 2020 by James Johnson of Minnesota, also from Beaver Lake. The upcoming IGFA world record paddlefish weighs 164 pounds, 13 ounces and was recently caught on Lake of the Ozarks, just a few hours north of Missouri.

Stranded paddlefish are accepted for Arkansas records because the fish are plankton feeders and rarely encounter lures or bait. Hooking is the most common way to catch them.

Schleeper says that even at age 65, he gets excited about catching big fish and will have a taxidermist make a replica of his official state record paddlefish.

“I didn’t even know there were paddlefish in Beaver Lake, so the whole thing was a happy surprise for me,” he said. “I will be placing the replica paddlefish mount in my shop, where I have mounted several other large fish, including some Beaver Lake stripers.

The presence of the prehistoric fish in Beaver Lake is the result of stocking in the 1990s, according to AGFC. These stockings were constructed to provide a source of paddlefish hatchery material in the event of a decline in the local river fishery.

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“Fortunately, paddlefish are still doing well in other rivers, and the Beaver Lake fish was never needed,” said AGFC fisheries supervisor for the region Jon Stein. said in a statement from the agency. “However, these fish produce great trophy potential for anglers.”

A recent ordinance passed by the AGFC expands paddlefish opportunities by offering a limited, permit-based snag season in the White River portion of Beaver Lake to target some of these giant paddlefish as they move upstream.