FishwithJD

The web's best fishing magazine

125 Pounds of Paddlefish: A New Oklahoma Record

By 12 Comments

Aaron Stone with his 125-pound 7-ounce OK state record paddlefish April 10 from the Arkansas River. Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife Conservation/Courtesy


Here’s Aron Stone of Pawhuska, Oklahoma with a new state record paddlefish from the Arkansas River that weighed 125 pounds, 7 ounces. An impressive beast to be sure, but I’m not totally sure how I feel about the way folks go about catching paddlefish in the areas where they live.

As plankton feeders, paddlefish won’t bite anything when they run upstream to spawn, so snagging with treble hooks is allowed. While perfectly legal, for some reason, this just sounds kinda crude and barbaric to me but then again, it’s really the same thing that happens when sockeye (red) salmon run. They’re also plankton feeders and really don’t bite well in freshwater, so legalized snagging is acceptable and widely-practiced. You just snag reds in the mouth with beads, yarn or Coho Flies instead of gut hooking them with trebles (I’ve done it).

I guess I really shouldn’t knock something I don’t know all that much about, but paddlefish snagging just doesn’t seem all that cool. But maybe I’ll have to give it a shot someday…just so I can comment more intelligently about it in the future. Maybe there are plenty of ’em and the populations can handle the snagging. Perhaps I’m way off base here (wouldn’t be the first time!) and these are just the ignorant thoughts of one West Coaster…

What do y’all think?

Mikey Does it Again: A new Lake Tahoe record Brown Trout!

By 5 Comments

Marvin Child with his record brown!

Mike Nielsen of Tahoe Topliners is a very dangerous man…if you’re a brown trout, that is. This morning, he guided client Marvin Child to a new Lake Tahoe record brown trout. The fish weighed 15 pounds, 15 ounces and beats the previous mark of 15 pounds, 2 ounces, which was a fish that Nielsen guided a client to in 2008, which beat the previous record fish that…yep, you guessed it he guided yet another client to. Like I said, he’s a bad, bad man!

The latest record catch (which measured 36 inches), sucked down an F11 silver and black Rapala doused in Pautzke’s Liquid Krill.

Giant Lake Shasta Spotted Bass not far off World Record!

By 9 Comments

A new Lake Shasta record for spotts!


Our old friend Scott Green is one of the top bass anglers in all of California. If you ever see his name in a tournament you’re fishing at places like Clear Lake, Berryessa or Shasta, start thinking about second place! To prove my point, check out these massive spotted bass from Lake Shasta he just caught, including a new lake record 8.85 pounder, which is a pound and change off the World Record!

Nice work, dude!

Who says you can’t catch largemouth in crappy weather?

By 6 Comments

Another healthy Clear Lake largemouth for the Big Man


So the calendar says spring, but here in California at least, it’s like the dead of winter…cold, rainy and windy. It’s wacky weather like this — sunny and 70 degrees one day, then pouring the next — that can make bass fishing tough. Still, our pal Big Fred Contaoi has been sending us some pix of big bass from Clear Lake lately, so he’s obviously figured something out. In fact, he finished 4th in a big tourney there last week…and the weather was super funky then, too.

But, this is all a long preamble to say that the spawn’s not far off…so it’s time to target pre-spawn bass. Learn how HERE

Huge 109-pound blue catfish is a pending Virginia state record

By 6 Comments


Time to bust out the hot oil and have a good ol’ fashioned fish fry! Tony Milam just caught a what soon should be recognized as the Virginia state record, 109-pound blue catfish in Buggs Island Lake.

The 53-inch beast featured a 41-inch girth was hooked near the confluence of the Dan and Roanoke rivers and tops the current state record blue by a whopping 17 pounds. No word on what Milam caught the fish on but something like a live German Sheppard or a side of beef wouldn’t be out of the question!

Official state certification is estimated to be completed sometime next week.