A Kansas man out snagging paddlefish for the first time on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks had all-time beginner’s luck this weekend when he caught a world-record-sized paddlefish.

Snagging refers to the method of fishing. As opposed to angling, where a fish has to swallow a hook, snagging uses hooks tethered to a fishing line to catch the flesh of fish. Paddlefish are caught using snagging because, as filter feeders that eat plankton, they are not attracted to angling lures.

Before going out on the water Sunday, Chad Williams of Olathe, Kansas, did not know what a paddlefish was.

“I was lucky enough to get invited to go out snagging with friends. I’d never been snagging before. Never seen a paddlefish – didn’t even know what it was,” the lucky fisherman said in a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) press release.

The record-setting fish weighed 164 pounds and 13 ounces, surpassing a 164-pound paddlefish caught in Oklahoma in 2021. The previous Missouri state record was 140 pounds.

Mr. Williams said the size of the fish left him reeling.

The captain of the charter boat he was on, Jason Smith, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the fish was just over 62 inches long and took 10 minutes to bring in.

“I was thinking I was extremely weak because it was taking so long to reel in. My body was aching,” Mr. Williams said in the MDC release.

Mr. Smith told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the fish dwarfed the usual catches people make on his boat trips — the largest specimen he had seen caught before only weighed 108 pounds, with most kept fish weighing only 40-70 pounds.

“I’ve been doing this for 18 years, and it’s off the charts for anything I’ve ever seen,” he told the newspaper.

After giving away some of the meat to the people with whom he was fishing, Mr. Williams told MDC that he plans to send the head of the fateful paddlefish to a taxidermist for display.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.