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Chris Cantrell, of Berryville, Arkansas, speared an enormous paddlefish over Labor Day weekend whereas diving in Beaver Lake. The fish weighed over 90 kilos and is a doable spearfishing world document, in response to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Cantrell was diving within the Northwest Arkansas lake together with his pal Andy Jeffries and brother-in-law Kalvin Cackler on Sept. 3. They have been searching for striped bass and carp that day, however when Cantrell noticed the large paddlefish, he determined to make a play for it.
“I used to be on my third and remaining dive of the day after I noticed it,” Cantrell informed AGFC. “I used to be perhaps 15 to twenty toes underwater after I noticed the big form. I assumed it was a gar at first, however then I used to be in a position to get shut sufficient to see what it was and take the shot.”
Cantrell had the proper gear to battle an outsized fish. His speargun had a float line connected, which allowed him to stay the paddlefish with a barbed spear with out getting pulled down by the 90-pound brute.
“I dropped the gun after the shot as a result of the fish made a robust dive when it was hit,” Cantrell defined. “With a giant fish, you drop the gun in order that it doesn’t pull you down. The float line will preserve it pinned. By the point I used to be again on the floor, the fish had already pulled the road from the gun and the 50 toes of float line. It was pulling towards the float on the floor.”
The float line did its job and saved the large fish from diving too deep, whereas Cantrell pulled on the principle line and regularly labored the paddlefish to the floor. After a 15-minute battle, he drew the fish shut sufficient to kill it together with his dive knife. With the fish dispatched and loaded of their pontoon boat, the trio of spear fishermen knew they could have a record-sized fish on their fingers. The onerous half was finding an authorized scale to weight it on.
“It was a vacation weekend, so discovering someplace with licensed scales that was open took a very long time,” Cantrell mentioned. “The AGFC workplace was closed, and authorized scales are required for any document submissions. My sister truly advised we strive calling a UPS retailer. To my shock, one agreed.”
Inserting Cantrell’s paddlefish on an authorized UPS scale, it weighed 90 kilos, 12 ounces, which must be sufficiently big to set a brand new spearfishing world document for the species. These information are maintained by the International Underwater Spearfishing Association, which lists the current paddlefish world record as a 72-pound fish speared by Wesley Steward in 2019.
Jon Stein, regional fisheries supervisor for the AGFC, verified that Cantrell’s fish is certainly a paddlefish. He additionally mentioned outsized paddlefish usually are not unusual in Beaver Lake, and that almost all of these large fish are holdovers from stockings that happened in 1996 and 2000. The present Arkansas rod-and-reel document—a 118-pound, 9-ounce paddlefish—was caught from the identical lake in 2020, and Stein mentioned that anglers there recurrently report sonar imaging revealing paddlefish within the 100-pound class.
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Trying on the state’s fishing records book, Cantrell’s paddlefish would fall underneath the “unrestricted deal with document” class, which is for fish caught by any authorized means aside from a rod and reel. Since there are at the moment no entries for paddlefish on this class, Cantrell’s fish ought to go down as a brand new state document.
Cackler, who runs the Beaver Lake Spearfishing Fb web page, informed AGFC that he and his brother-in-law are getting the paperwork collectively and plan to submit the fish to the IUSA. No matter whether or not it qualifies as a world document, although, it was undoubtedly the largest fish Cantrell has speared within the two months since he took up the game.
“My largest fish earlier than this was a 22-pound striped bass,” Cantrell mentioned. “It was a visit to recollect.”
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