Arkansas fisherman accidentally catches new paddlefish, the state’s largest paddlefish

Northwest Arkansas’ 31,000-acre Beaver Lake has been a premier bass, sunfish and striped bass fishing spot for generations. The lake is known for its hot catches of heavy striped bass, and big linesiders were the target of fishing buddies Mike Schleeper and Tom Mayberry of Garfield, Arkansas, when they set out just after sunrise Saturday.

“I caught some 30-pound striped bass in Beaver Lake in June, and that was exactly what we were hoping for on that sunny and hot morning,” says Schlepper Outdoor living. “We had already caught a couple of small striped bass – one on a live minnow, another on a top-water plug. We were slowly trolling in 30 feet of water in the lower lake. That’s when I got a bite on the minnow.”

The retiree said he didn’t run or fight like some of the oversized striped bass he’s caught. But he knew he was big, and the fish keep ripping against heavy baitcasting gear and 20-pound monofilament.

So he turned around on his boat, a 24-foot Blue Wave center console, and followed the fish.

He fought with the fish for a long time, still thinking it was a striped bass or maybe a heavy catfish. Finally, 45 minutes after hooking the fish, he pulled it to the surface and saw something he had never seen before: a huge paddlefish.

“I had never seen one alive or up close, but Tom fishes for them in Missouri and he was excited when he saw how big it was,” Schleeper says. “It was hooked and my 5/0 single hook was barely in the fish… Tom had a lot of trouble handling it on the boat and it wouldn’t fit in our net. I told him to just cut my line. But he knew we should pull it aboard and weigh it.”

The anglers ran a rope through the fish’s gills and out of its mouth and pulled it into their boat. In the process, the hook popped out of its pectoral fin.

“We were really lucky to land him,” Schleeper said. “Then we stopped fishing because Tom insisted we have him weighed and measured.”

Schleeper called a friend at the Hook, Line and Sinker tackle shop in the nearby town of Rogers and told him he had caught a huge paddlefish. His buddy contacted the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Soon after, Eric Gates, a biologist with the AGFC, called Schleeper. He told him to take the fish to a FedEx office in Rogers, where there was a certified scale that could determine the official weight of the catch.

“We drove to the FedEx office and met Eric, who had a big tub that we could put the fish in,” says Schleeper. “We all stood in line at the FedEx office with the paddlefish in the tub, waiting to use their scales.”

It took about 15 minutes for their turn to arrive, and Schleeper says he got some strange looks from people in the store.

“However, there was a FedEx employee who was a fisherman, and he was excited to see and weigh the fish.”

The paddlefish weighed 127 pounds, 6 ounces on a calibrated scale, measured 66.75 inches long and had a girth of 44 inches.

Schleeper’s fish easily beats the old Arkansas record spoonfish, which weighed 118 pounds. It was caught in 2020 by Minnesota’s James Johnson, also from Beaver Lake. The upcoming IGFA world record spoonfish weighs 164 pounds, 13 ounces and was recently caught in the Lake of the Ozarks, just a few hours north in Missouri.

Captured paddlefish are accepted for Arkansas records because the fish feed on plankton and rarely bite on bait or lures. Trapping is the most common method of capture.

Schleeper says that even at age 65, he still enjoys catching big fish and will have a taxidermist make him a replica of his official paddlefish.

“I didn’t even know there were paddlefish in Beaver Lake, so this whole thing was a pleasant surprise for me,” he said. “I’m going to put the paddlefish replica in my shop where I have other large fish mounted, including some Beaver Lake striped bass.”

The presence of the prehistoric fish in Beaver Lake is the result of stocking efforts in the 1990s, according to the AGFC. These stocking efforts were conducted to ensure a source of paddlefish in case local river fisheries stocks declined.

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“Fortunately, paddlefish continue to thrive in other rivers and the fish from Beaver Lake have never been used,” said Jon Stein, AGFC fisheries supervisor for the region, in a statement from the agency. “However, these fish offer great trophy potential for anglers.”

A recent regulation passed by the AGFC expands paddlefish opportunities by allowing a limited, permit-based fishing season in the White River section of Beaver Lake to catch some of these giant paddlefish on their upstream migratory trajectory.