Angler's lucky day breaks record

The biggest paddlefish Andy Belobraydic landed Saturday at Table Rock Lake also landed him in the record books.

After a 30-minute fight during his first snagging trip, Belobraydic hauled aboard a nearly 6-foot-long, 140-pound 9-ounce paddlefish that eclipsed the current Missouri paddlefish record — a 139-pound 4-ounce fish caught in 2002, also at Table Rock Lake.

Fishing with two buddies from a 16-foot boat, Belobraydic said he had just tied on some new treble hooks and was starting to sweep his rig back and forth when he hooked something deep.

"I told them 'I think I'm stuck on the bottom,' but then my pole thumped pretty good and the fish started pulling the boat," Belobraydic said. "Man, I've never hooked anything like that. When it started peeling out that drag, we knew it was something big."

He said the fish briefly rolled up to the surface before it mad a hard run back down to the bottom.

"Whenever it came to the surface, one guy said it was a good 80-pound fish," he recalled. "It took three of us to get it into the boat."

The 140-pound fish was weighed on official scales at Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery in Branson. Paperwork is on its way to the state to confirm it will be a new record.

Belobraydic said the record paddlefish, measuring nearly four feet around its belly, remains frozen at a friend's business in Richwoods, about 40 miles southwest of St. Louis. Belobraydic hopes one of the major outdoor stores will pay to have a cast made of the fish and display it publicly.

Mark Schmit, owner of Bridgeport Resorts where Belobraydic and fellow anglers Dwayne and Dan Dirks first brought the fish in, said the monster paddlefish caused quite a sensation.

"Everybody staying here at the resort came down to the docks to see it," he said. " I knew it was the biggest one I've ever seen. Heck, it's the biggest fish of any kind I've ever seen. Something this size you equate more with ocean fish."

Schmit said a rising Table Rock Lake provided ideal paddlefish snagging conditions, and he said a lot of big fish have been coming in.

"Last Thursday a 115-pounder was brought in, and until Saturday THAT was the biggest fish I'd ever seen," he said.

The new paddlefish record has caught the interest of state fisheries experts like Trish Yasger, paddlefish coordinator for Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

She hopes to receive the paddlefish's long snout, called a rostrum, and its jawbone to identify how old the fish was.

She said the state introduced paddlefish into Table Rock Lake in the mid-70s and the fish's jawbone would reveal its age because of growth rings it contains, much like rings in a tree trunk.

"My guess, looking at the size of that fish is that it's about 25 years old, though there's so much variation in their growth rates," Yasger said. "We know they can live 50 years or more, especially in the reservoirs where there's lots of food for them without the need for them to fight a current."

Although they do develop eggs and try to swim up the James River and other tributary rivers to spawn, Yasger said there's no evidence Missouri paddlefish are successful spawners. On the James River they are blocked from going farther upstream by the dam at Lake Springfield.

And she said paddlefish need large gravel beds consistently covered by 2 to 4 feet of good-flowing water for eggs to hatch and baby paddlefish to survive.

Because Missouri streams and rivers fluctuate so much, they don't provide the kind of spawning habitat that paddlefish need to reproduce.

That is huge! I fished/snagged for them once in MT, caught about a 20# and called it good.  wasn't my cup of tea. Guys go nuts for them up there, and plan trips all year long to go and try to get them. They taste a lot like sturgeon.

Never fished for paddlefish, but I used to fish the lakes on the Missouri River in South Dakota where there are lots of big ones. But the state record there is "only" about 128 pounds...

Growing up in Missouri, I always wanted to try paddlefish snagging.  But the snagging part never set well with me, so I never did.  BTW, that's a big darn fish!