Watch: Giant paddlefish caught in North Dakota ties state record

On May 3, just two days into North Dakota’s brief spoonbill catching season, Tyler Hughes and his wife were in a prime spot on the banks of the Yellowstone River. They were fishing near Fairview, about five miles upstream from where the Yellowstone flows into the Missouri River. They had spent the morning casting a large 10/0 treble hook tied to a 5-ounce weight, but by 10 a.m. Hughes realized he was not ready to land a heavy spoonbill. they caught one. He had forgotten his long-handled gaff.

“That’s when I got back in my truck and went back to our campsite to get my boat hook,” Hughes said. Outdoor living. “I returned to the river with my gaff about 30 minutes later and started casting. At 11 a.m. I snagged something large that I thought was a rock or log. But then it started moving and I knew I had caught a big paddlefish.

Using a 10-foot spinning rod spooled with 75-pound test braided line, Hughes fought the fish for about 15 minutes. The fish was hooked on its side and it went all the way across the muddy river where it threatened to break apart.

“The fish took all 250 yards of my braided line, and the knot connecting it to my 30-pound-test monofilament backing line was sticking out of the rod guides,” Hughes says. “I knew I had to put the mono back on the reel because the river is full of snags and the fish would break the mono for sure.”

After regaining some line, Hughes walked a short distance upstream. He finally pushed the fish toward shore and swung it downstream, where his wife and several other people were standing.

Video footage recorded that day shows their friends Joe Martino, Kellan Geiger and Taylor Schwede gluing the fish with two gaffs, then dragging it out of Yellowstone and onto dry land. It was not an easy task and the fish lost blood and eggs in the process.

“I knew it was a big deal, but I wasn’t thinking about a record (at first),” Hughes says. “But we loaded it into my truck and I took it to a weigh station in Williston where a company cleans the paddlefish in exchange for preserving the eggs (for) caviar.”

Hughes’ paddlefish weighed 131 pounds on the certified scale and measured 74 inches long. State officials attended the weigh-in and on Tuesday the North Dakota Department of Fish and Game announced that the fish officially tied the state record for the species, caught in 2016 in the Missouri River, near its confluence with the Yellowstone.

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Hughes says he thinks his fish could have been even heavier, as it was three inches longer than the 2016 record. (It’s possible the NDGFD made a record-keeping error because it says the fish of Hughes is 53 inches long in the registry, but says it was 74 inches long in a press release. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

“The caviar company got about 30 pounds of eggs from my fish, and state officials say it may have coughed up eggs before being weighed,” Hughes says. “The two big gaff holes also caused a lot of blood loss, so maybe it weighed more. But I am so grateful. It was a surreal take.