Paddlefish snagging: The real craziness in March

The craziness that characterizes the month of March isn't limited to just the opening day of trout fishing at Missouri's four trout parks or the big basketball tournament.

Whether you call it a paddlefish, spoonbill or shovelnose cat, the snagging season for this living fossil begins on Saturday. For a growing number of spoonbill snaggers, this is the craziness of March.

One of North America's largest freshwater fish, the spoonbill will not take lures or bait, they must be snagged -- or gathered with a hook -- if an angler wants to catch one.

The spring spoonbill season has long been popular on Truman Lake,the James River Arm of Table Rock Lake, the Lake of the Ozarks, around Warsaw, as well as the Osage River, near Osceola. Both local sportsmen and women, and others from outside the region can be seen using heavy fishing gear to try to hook one of these monster fish.

Since it is not attracted to baits, blindly snagging the fish is the only legal method for catching the spoonbill. The effectiveness and success depends on the presence of large numbers of fish in a confined area.

Spoonbill are fished for during the spring spawning season, when the fish are concentrated on their spawning grounds.

Snaggers use everything from large, deep sea rods to homemade hickory rods. Others prefer hoe and pitchfork handles.

The rods are fitted with strong reels, heavy line, one or two treble hooks and a heavy weight. The line, with unbaited hooks, was formerly thrown out into the water from the bank and reeled back through the water until a spoonbill was snagged.

The sport is entirely different, now. Most people fish from a boat.

Once a spoonbill is hooked, the battle is on. The combination of a heavy fish and fast-moving water in which the fish is usually caught insures a real struggle for the lucky angler.

An anachronism, the spoonbill is one of only two living representatives of an ancient, 65 million-year-old family of freshwater fish.

The other member of the formerly numerous family inhabits the Yangtze River system, in China. This Asian species reportedly grows twice as large as the American species.

The two outstanding features of the spoonbill are it's long, paddle-shaped snout and it's boneless skeleton. The snout may comprise up to one-third of the fish's overall length.

The skeleton is made up entirely of cartilage. The fish is almost scaleless, with only a few small scales on the side.

Its eyes are very small, the mouth is large and it has a deeply forked tail.

In earlier years, the spoonbill was one of the most important commercial fish in the country. It has declined drastically in numbers, due to the over-fishing and habitat loss, as well as stream channelization and draining of bottomland lakes having eliminated much of the ideal conditions for the fish that once existed.

For most of its life, the spoonbill inhabits slow-moving water, rich in microscopic life. During the spawning season, it moves to fast-flowing rivers, caused by spring floods.

Missouri doesn't have the long river system spoonbills need to have successful spawning, so the Missouri Department of Conservation stocks fish each year. Today, the Missouri Department of Conservation hatcheries raise spoonbill to be artificially stocked in many of the state's spoonbill fisheries.

Trish Yasger a MDC Fisheries management biologist, said, "The 2007 year-class of spoonbill will be 7 years old this season and should provide a good number of legal, 34-inch fish, weighing 25 to 30 pounds. When the 2008 year-class starts to come of age next year, we hope to see some really good spoonbill snagging that should continue over the next several years."

Yasger went on to say, "Weather always plays an important role in snaggers' success. They are easier to catch when they swim upstream and congregate below dams, in response to spring rains.

"The best snagging conditions occur when water temperature reaches 50 to 55 degrees. This year's peak action could be delayed, due to the unusually cold winter weather.

"Water temperatures, as the season opens, are in the low 30s and 40s. The fish don't often start running upstream as early as March 15.

"We don't see lots of big fish being caught on opening day, but as the water temperature and flow increases, you will start seeing more of the larger females."

The Missouri state record spoonbill weighed more than 134 pounds.