Paddlefish At Least 40 Years Old Caught At Table Rock Lake

KSMU | By Michele Skalicky

Published April 23, 2021 at 11:48 AM CDT

Joe Richter holds a tag that was on a paddlefish he snagged

A paddlefish caught recently on Table Rock Lake has an interesting story attached to it.

Joe Richter snagged the 57-pound fish on the lake’s James River arm in March and noticed it was tagged, according to a news release from the Missouri Department of Conservation. He recalled that MDC had done a paddefish tagging project a few years back. (The agency tagged paddlefish from 2015-2019). Richter had a feeling the organization would be interested in receiving the information on the tag, so he gave them a call. He was transferred to MDC paddlefish biologist, Trish Yasger, who took down the information, and, two days later, he received a call from her.

It turns out, the tag and the fish were much older than Richter thought. The number of the tag on the fish he snagged, S-777, she told him, wasn’t on the list of numbers from the latest tagging effort.

Tag found on a paddlefish snagged at Table Rock Lake in March

She wanted to be sure Richter had given him the correct tag number, and he told her he had., so, she did some digging. She reached out to MDC Table Rock fisheries biologist, Shane Bush, who looked through old records and determined that the small metal tag had been placed on the paddlefish in March, 1990. (Former MDC fisheries biologist, Kim Graham, had tagged many paddlefish in the 1980s and 1990s). The size recorded for that fish indicated it had been part of MDC’s initial stockings of 84,159 paddlefish fingerlings into Table Rock in the 1970s, according to the agency.

The paddlefish stocking was done from 1972 until 1977. Biologists knew the construction of the Harry S. Truman Dam in the early 1970s would block the paddlefish spawning migrations that occurred each year out of Lake of the Ozarks and would flood the fishes’ spawning grounds on the Osage River near Osceola. The idea was that, if a paddlefish population could be established at Table Rock through stocking, then it would be likely the same thing could be done at Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake. And it would create an opportunity for paddlefish snagging at Table Rock.

Today, there are thriving paddlefish at all three reservoirs, according to Yasger. “They have good growth rates, are healthy and are in good condition.” She credits Kim Graham and other biologists for laying the groundwork for paddlefish management in Missouri.