Joe Wilkinson Outdoors

Narrow fishing window Though sport anglers are allowed to take paddlefish (daily limit of two), they are hardly more than a blip on the fishing screen. First, paddlefish don't take bait or a lure. They are filter feeders, taking in photoplankton as they swim or suspend. You have to snag them, almost by accident. Also, the season is pretty restrictive. On the Mississippi, snagging must take place within 500 yards of navigation dams during the Jan. 1 to April 15 season. But three of those tailwaters are closed until March 15. There are restrictions on the Missouri and Sioux rivers, too, as well as "no snagging" regulations on 11 inland stretches. Details are available in the Iowa fishing regulations booklet.

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From 30 feet below came a sluggish pull. The stiff rod bent under the weight. Another paddlefish on. There's no dancing rod tip, like when a big crappie is trying to give you the slip. You just keep the line taut, the tip up and slowly crank it boatwards.

This was my first one -- about 15 pounds. It was one of three sizes being snagged as I went along on a research trip on the Mississippi River. There were also a few 12-pounders and some smaller 7-to 9-pounders, each representing a different year class among the 25 we snagged.

On this day, we were at Clinton, downstream from the lock and dam across the river at Fulton, Ill. As each of the "spoonbills" was hoisted over the side of the boat, we took length and weight measurements and checked to see if it was "wired."

"If it already has a wire tag, this wand will beep," said Denny Weiss, fisheries researcher from the Department of Natural Resources Bellevue station, as he passed a metal detector over the flat, pronounced paddle, or rostrum. "If it doesn't indicate one, then we inject a numbered tag into the tip of that rostrum."

A "beeping" fish would be a recapture, factored in with all the one-time-only catches, as Weiss assembles data for Iowa's share of a 23-state study.

"These fish have been around for 300 to 400 million years, (but) we are concerned about their populations," Weiss said.

The leathery-skinned, beady-eyed paddlefish are as ugly as they are ancient, looking much like the dinosaurs that inhabited their watery world way back when. Modern-day obstacles -- sedimentation in the river, impeded migration routes and now poaching -- could threaten their existence.

"The Russian caviar industry, their sturgeon fishery has been exploited. It wasn't monitored correctly, and it's pretty well collapsed," Weiss said. "So the world caviar demand has come to North America for our sturgeon and paddlefish."

The roe, or eggs, bring $30 to $50 a pound on the black market. A big sturgeon or paddlefish can yield up to eight to 10 pounds of eggs, just ahead of spawning season.

Besides the illegal aspect of taking too many (commercial fishing for paddlefish has been closed for years), lies a critical environmental concern. Paddlefish are a slow-growing, slow-to-reproduce species. Also, a paddlefish does not spawn every year, like many other fish. Removing a large number of mature paddlefish from a section of the river can spell big trouble.

And while it looks about as easy as finding a needle in a watery haystack, the odds of finding paddlefish can be improved with river knowledge and a good fish locater. We drifted over a hot spot most of the four hours we were on the water. As one of us snagged a paddlefish, we would work it up, return it to the water and motor back upstream.

"If there are only a few fish, I will see lines on the graph; the longer the line, the bigger the paddlefish," Weiss said. "If it's a big school, say 50 to 100 or so, the graph is going to be just solid black. We had about four or five feet of solid fish down there today."

That was apparent several times when we had two fish on at the same time. (Jeremy Kettman from the Jackson County Conservation Department was along, too.) We actually had a "triple" for about two seconds, but I was slow to set the hook and lost mine. A couple of bigger ones have surfaced this winter (38 pounds is the biggest fish) on these snag-and-tag forays. Over the decade of the study, a few 40-pounders have been hauled on board. The record is 62 pounds.

Those are impressive-sized fish, creatures in peril if the poaching threat grows.

"It helps to have a lot of eyes and ears on the river, anglers who might see something suspicious like somebody netting them or a boat bringing lots of paddlefish on board. They should give their conservation officer a call," Weiss said.

After 400 million years, the hardest days might lie just ahead for these ancient mariners.

Joe Wilkinson, information specialist for the Department of Natural Resources, is the Press-Citizen's outdoors columnist. His column appears on Thursdays. For questions or comments, write to P.O. Box 2480, Iowa City, Iowa, 52244.