Paddlefish snaggers eagerly anticipate opening day, Thursday

A spoonbill snagger casting from the bank on opening day last year, hoping to hook a fish on the way to it’s spawning ground on the Osage River near Osceola.

Ken White | Special to the Daily Mail

With trout parks having recently opened, it’s time for that growing number of hardy souls (who can throw a heavy-weighted hook and outlast a fish that might weigh 30 to 100 pounds) to ready themselves for the upcoming spoonbill snagging season — beginning, Thursday, March 15.

Spoonbills are relics from the past and could fit in with the animals featured in the Jurassic Park movies. These oddities of nature feed by swimming with their big mouth open and filter their food, microscopic plankton.

Though highly specialized, spoonbills are one of the most primitive of all fish. They differ from other species of freshwater fish via their elongated snout, long gill covers as well as their shark-like body form. Their large size and bizarre shape have made these fish particularly interesting to layman and scientist alike.

Since it is not attracted to baits, blindly snagging the fish is the only legal way for catching spoonbills. This method’s effectiveness depends on the presence of large numbers of the fish in an area during their spawning run during March and April months when the fish are concentrated in their spawning grounds.

Anglers, armed with deep-sea gear, hit the productive waters where the spoonies make their spawning rituals. Bob Morris, Warsaw, made his first snagging trip for spoonbills last year and hooked a 56-pound monster.

“I had always thought that it was too much work to try to snag one of the big fish and never tried it until my neighbor asked me to go with him on the Osage River near Osceola,” recounted Morris. “After hooking my first paddlefish, I am more than ready for this season.”

Morris moved to Missouri several years ago and had never heard of spoonbills until he moved to Warsaw.

“After moving here several years ago, I heard about the big fish that they had a big paddle-like nose,” explained Morris. “I had heard guys say ‘you don’t fish for them, you work for them.’ I couldn’t believe they only had one bone in their body and that was in their jaw.”

Added Morris: “They are a very unusual fish, but also tasty. We smoked some of the meat we got from that big one I hooked last year and it surprised us that it was go good — and that’s another reason I’ll be out there after another one Thursday morning .”

Bill Davis, of Blue Springs, is another snagger who didn’t think much about snagging for the big spoonbills until he tried it several years ago.

“When I saw people fishing in that muddy water, I thought they were fishing blind,” he said. “They can’t see the fish, and the fish don’t hit a lure — so how can they enjoy fishing for the spoonbills? However, after I tried it with a friend who had been snagging for more than 20 years, we both hooked fish that weighed more than 30 pounds and I became a confirmed snagger.”

Davis remembers his first spoonbill like it happened yesterday.

“There were a lot of boats in the river and guys flinging heave weights, and I saw one angler hook a monster,” detailed Davis. “While watching him bring the fish close to his boat, I felt something on my 80-pound test line and knew it must be a big fish.”

A pair of successful spoonbill anglers display their catch.

Photo coirtesy of Missouri Department of Conservation

Continued Davis: “After the spoonbill made several long runs, I started bringing it in. When we finally had it in the net, I couldn’t believe the size of that monster. It was by far the largest fish I had ever hooked. I had no idea that I would ever catch a fish that large. It was my biggest thrill of more than 20 years fishing.”

Brian Elkington, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fish biologist stationed at the Columbia, Missouri office, had handled spoonbills on rivers since 1997 — and found the spoonbill is a very mobile fish. Biologists from the Columbia office have previously gathered data from thousands of spoonbills caught from 22 states. A 3-foot-long fish that was released in the Ohio River at Mount Vernon, Indiana in 1998 was caught by an angler eight years later in the Missouri River in South Dakota. The fish had traveled 1,136 miles. Another spoonbill tagged, went the other direction and was later caught in the Kaskaskia River in Illinois.

Elkington and crew kept up with the necessary data to manage what is arguably one of the greatest natural curiosities from a whole other time.

Craig Springer, editor of the Fish and Wildlife Service magazine, pointed out the value, as well as some interesting facts about this survivor from the past. Plus the efforts being made to keep them going.

When the season opens Thursday, Missouri snaggers might get off to a slow star. There are plenty of fish, however, in most of the popular hot spots — including the James River Arm of Table Rock, the Osage and Niangua arms of the Lake of the Ozarks, the Osage arm of Truman, as well as the Osage River below Bagnell Dam and the Osceola area.

The best conditions for snagging paddlefish is when the water temperature reaches 50 degrees and the water flow is increasing. That is when the fish move upstream to spawn. Usually the larger fish are snagged later in the season. On opening day most of the fish snagged are small males and a few larger females.

The Missouri Department of Conservation will be in the fourth year of a five-year tagging project. It involves putting metal tags on up to 6,000 paddlefish netted in the Lake of the Ozarks, Truman and Table Rock — plus around 1,000 from the Mississippi River. So far, the largest fish tagged this year weighed 97 pounds, as well as a few in the 80-to-90 pound range according to Trish Yeager, MDC Fisheries Management Biologist.

Should a snagger catch a legal size tagged fish, they may send the following information to receive a reward: The date caught, where the fish was caught, tag number, and the eye-to-fork of the tail length of the fish. Send to: Missouri Department of Conservation, 3815 East Jackson Blvd., Jackson Mo., 63755. For questions, call 660-530-5500.

Rewards will not be given for tags removed from sub-legal fish. Photos of tag numbers from legal fish, however, will be accepted.

There is no doubt that when Thursday morning rolls around, there will be lots of snaggers from the Lake of the Ozarks to Table Rock ready to hook a fish that has survived for centuries.