Bryan Baker of “Spoonbill Wreckers” guide service in Miami, Okla., is a 15-year veteran guide and angler. He specializes in fishing for paddlefish or spoonbills on the Neosho River. The Neosho is a large feeder of the famed fishing spot, Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees, in Northeast Oklahoma.
In recent years Baker has been targeting invasive bighead carp in his area waters. Late last April he caught a world record there weighing more than 118 pounds.
Because his fishing water is dark and fish commonly are deep, he uses Garmin forward facing sonar to locate fish and casts to snag them. Because carp are an invasive species, snagging is encouraged by state fisheries folks for removal. Snagging is also a lawful way to catch paddlefish.
“I was out that afternoon with my good friend Jonathan Ellis and his son Riley, who’s a star Vian High School baseball and football athlete,” Baker tells Wired2fish. “I spotted a big fish on my sonar and told Riley to cast a 10/0 treble hook with a 4-ounce sinker toward the fish with a heavy spinning outfit and 100-pound-test braided line.
“He made a perfect cast beyond the fish, snagged it, and the fight was on for what I thought was a giant bighead carp.”
Riley’s athletic power came into play battling the massive fish deep in very strong current. A video made of the fight shows the power of the fish, and the young man who drew it close to the boat. Jonathan finally grab his son’s catfish and powerlifted into Baker’s 24-foot Pro Cat 240 Sea Ark boat.
“I thought for sure it was a bighead carp, until it surfaced and I saw it was a massive flathead catfish,” said Baker, age 53. “I thought it might be a state record fish. So, we put it in my boat’s aerated live well and took off for my nearby riverside dock where we could weigh it.”
At Baker’s dock the fish weighed 82 pounds. They made a couple phone calls and checked with state officials to see if Riley’s catfish could be a new state flathead catfish record.
“Because he snagged it, it was short of the state unrestricted fishing record by about 19 pounds,” Baker explained. “But had Riley caught the fish conventionally without snagging it, the cat would have topped the current state flathead record of 78.5 pounds.”
With no record catch possible the anglers released Riley’s fish from Baker’s dock and went back to fishing in the Sea Ark. Baker says they caught about 15 paddlefish that afternoon, which made it a banner fishing day for them.
No mount of the fish will be made by a taxidermist, and photos of videos of Riley’s catch will keep the memory of the fishing day for all the anglers.
“It was a win-win for everyone,” Baker said. “We had a great time, caught plenty of big fish, and released the flathead catfish to maybe be caught another day.”
