117-Pound Paddlefish That Avoided Capture Since The Bush Administration Caught In Montana

Way back on April 27, 2004, members of North Dakota Fish & Game used gill nets on the Missouri River to capture paddlefish in order to install jaw tags on the fish to keep track of population numbers and harvesting rates in the wild. They were a few miles from the Highway 85 bridge at Williston when they captured a 90-pound paddlefish which measured 49 inches long from the tail fork to the fish’s eye.

That paddlefish was given jaw tag number ND7570 and released back into the wild. 22 years later, the fish has been caught again, this time in another state (Montana), and it got bigger.

117-Pound Paddlefish Caught In Montana 22 Years After Being Tagged

For some perspective, when this fish was tagged Facebook was less than three months old (founded February 4, 2004). President Obama was still 4 years away from taking office. And the #1 movie at the box office that month was Hellboy followed by Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and The Passion of the Christ. Suffice it to say it was a LONG time ago when this fish was tagged.

So on June 12th in Montana’s Seven Sisters Wildlife Management Area near Sidney, Trevor Swisse was stunned to discover the 22-year-old jaw tag. He was fishing with his song (15 and 6) when he thought he snagged a small paddlefish. These fish are filter feeders and don’t ‘strike’ a bait like normal fish and instead you ‘snag’ them with unique fishing gear.

Swisse told Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks “at first I thought it was a small one. Me and the two boys went to Seven Sisters that morning, and I cast into some slack water behind a sandbar. I cast and hooked instantly, and I started pulling and it came really easy over to shore. I couldn’t see it out of the water until I come back over the bank, and then I saw how big it was.”

His sons were stoked. Of course they were. Trevor Swisse said “they loved every second” of the action. What kid doesn’t want to see dad catch the biggest fish they’ve ever seen?

Once he reeled it in and saw the jaw tag, the fish was taken to the Intake Dam Fishing Access Site cleaning station for data collection. They found that in the 22 years the fish had been out there eluding capture it had grown from 90 pounds to 117 pounds, and from 49 inches to 52 inches.

Pretty wild the fish can gain 27 pounds and only grow three inches but when you see the belly on this paddlefish it all makes sense.

Just an absolute unit. But far from a Montana state fishing record for the paddlefish species!

How Big Do They Get?

Currently, the Montana state fishing record for Paddlefish is a 142.5-pound fish that measured 77 inches long. It was caught by angler Larry Branstetter in the Missouri River Near Kipp Park way back on May 20, 1973. That is a 53-year-old fishing record going strong.

And to be clear, 117-pounds is a massive paddlefish. As is the state record of 142.5 pounds. But these fish can get huge! Here is a 164 pound, 13oz paddlefish caught in 2024 which demolished the Missouri state record as well back in 2024:

That fish could swallow a bulldog whole if it wasn’t a filter feeder. The 2024 paddlefish world record was caught by angler Chad Williams of Olathe, Kansas.

There was a time when paddlefish were nearly extinct in America due to over-harvesting and lack of necessary fishing regulations. But these days their population numbers are back throughout the heartland of the country.