Was NOT Expecting This...
 

Out doing some offshore fishing in the mouth of Station Camp Creek by our house when I hooked into a Monster! We had been catching some bass & white bass deep cranking when a ski boat cruised by. Annoyed at how close the boat came to us, I chunked my lure right behind the boat into their wake as to say, "I was fishing there jackass". :p Well, that's where things got interesting. My line started following them at Blazing speed. I knew I had thrown at least 20 yards behind them, but thinking I had hooked the boat did cross my mind with the amount of line screaming off the reel. Their silhouette now fading off into the distance my line headed into the opposite direction. I jumped on the trolling motor at full speed and started chasing this sucker down. I knew there was NO WAY I could horse it in with what I holding. We chased it around for about 10 minutes, many times thinking I was hung up until it would take off again. Eventually we were able to bring him to the surface. I said, that's a Paddlefish! Now what? Happy was able to get the bill into the net and I grabbed his tail and hoisted it on deck. Holy Cow! That was Fun! Sorry to be so long winded, but I had to tell somebody :) BTW, Gear used: 12lb Fluorocarbon, 7'-10" Ike Series rod, & Lews Speed Spool, & 6XD. *The Fish Was Released Alive*

http://i.imgur.com/xS2XHGe.jpg

WOW! what an incredible fish, nice job man too cool.

Dinosaur!! Cool story, too

Thanks Man! It'll be hard to top that this year...

Absolutely. That's what my wife said. Prehistoric! :)

Wow great job getting it in the boat.

That's a fish your going to be talking about years from now. Side note, how was the bass/whites biting out there?

Offshore the Bass bite has slowed down in the last couple of weeks. We see them, but it's 30 minutes between boated fish. The white bass are plentiful. They come up in the jumps and we pull them in 2 at a time on a Double Grub setup.

Wow great post. I will bet that dude had your heart pumping!

That's amazing. Goes to show you just never know what your gonna catch. Where was the fish hooked?

Thats awesome, did you get any measurements?


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I had to sit down afterwards and collect myself :)

2 hooks outside the mouth. How lucky is that?

We flagged down another boat, but they didn't have a scale or measuring tape. When I was holding him on the deck, his tail was touching and the bill went above my head quite a ways. I estimate 6'2" from snout to tail.

I have a funny story about a shovel bill. I was fishing a bluff wall on OH and one of those things came up and breached the surface about 5 feet in front of my trolling motor. It scared me so bad I almost fell out of the boat.

It's probably a good thing you didn't hook it inside the mouth. It would probably have been one of those monsters that get away stories. Congrats on a very cool catch.

If you were down by Cairo, I would not be surprised. Those things are constantly jumping out there. Fishing with my buddy, we kept saying they sound like humans falling from the sky. What a racket they make!