He should have needed a bigger boat.
An Arkansas angler became the envy of fishing enthusiasts everywhere after wrangling a 102-pound prehistoric “river monster” — from his kayak, no less.
The sportsman’s catch of a lifetime was shared on the Fisheries Division of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s official Facebook page.
According to the conservation agency, angler Robert Murphy had been targeting walleye on his kayak in the Upper White River near Goshen.
The Fayetteville resident’s excursion took a turn after he hooked into a North American paddlefish, a giant bony fish that was swimming around 50 million years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The primeval beast is also known as a spoonbill thanks to its flattened, oblong facial protuberance, which can measure between one-fourth and one-third of the fish’s total body length, according to Outdoor Life.
“I just bumped the fish with the lure and hooked it at the top of its tail,” the stonecutter told the outlet.
After an hourlong battle, Murphy was finally able to “land the prehistoric river monster,” per the Facebook post.
Accompanying photos show the ecstatic angler holding his quarry, whose supersize shnoz evokes a fictitious critter from a Dr. Seuss book.
Weighing the leviathan was another story. “It was tough locating a place, and it was 20 hours later before I found a FedEx office in the town of Siloam Springs where I could weigh it,” said Murphy.
The fish tipped the scales at 102 pounds — not quite enough to beat the state record set in 2020 with a 118-and-a-half-pounder from Beaver Lake. Meanwhile, the largest specimens ever observed can measure 7 feet long and weigh 160 pounds or more.
Despite their massive size, paddlefish don’t pose any threat to humans, instead preferring to dine on zooplankton.
The same can’t be said for human attitudes toward paddlefish. Murphy reportedly kept the fish and ate its roe — a delicacy in gourmet circles, akin to a poor man’s caviar.
Unfortunately, the paddlefish’s prized culinary status, among other factors, has caused populations to decline dramatically since the mid-20th century.
They are currently classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
In 2020, the Chinese paddlefish — one of the world’s largest freshwater fish — was officially declared extinct after exiting for 150 million years with experts blaming overfishing and damming for its demise.
