Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

It had finally arrived, the day that my daughter Mieke Slaba, Wagner, SD and I had set aside for our “not so annual” snagging trip.
I ‘d filmed a Mieke snagging three years ago, but we’d never had the opportunity to fish together as she hadn’t had the best of luck drawing a tag.

Since the border for South Dakota and Nebraska is the river, both states have a limited number of tags available with a drawing being held for those permits

Well this year would be different as we’d both received tags. I had my resident Nebraska as well a South Dakota non-resident paddlefish tag and she had a non-resident Nebraska tag.

When I headed out the door that morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes it was only October 12th and everything was covered with a heavy wet snow and it was still coming down.

Being the optimist that I am, I just knew it would quit shortly and gone before I knew it.

The snow was already disappearing as Larry Myhre, Sioux City, IA. and I headed north to meet our guide Marlyn Wiebelhaus, Wynot, NE and Mieke.

Arriving at the boat launch, it was good to see that Mieke had made the trip down, as she was all ready to go.

Marlyn arrived shortly there after and we launched the boat, preparing for another great day on the water.

As we pulled up below the dam at Yankton, there was only one boat there and he was already fighting a fish

Since the season is only open in October, we knew that it wouldn’t be long before more boats would be showing up.

Since Paddlefish are plankton feeders, the only way to catch them is by snagging, which is a much different method than most fishermen are used to.

Marlyn snags a little bit differently that a lot of folks, those that cast out yanking and cranking their line, heavy sinker and hook back in.

Marlyn’s method is more of a gentleman’s sport as he simply has the snaggers in his boat drop off line until they feel that they have enough line out and their weight is on the bottom at which time, he slowly trolls through the area that holds the fish. The anglers keep yanking on their rods until a hook up is made.

Since fish generally face into the current, our best luck came as we trolled across the current, giving us a larger target to try and hook with our small treble hook.

Just as the boat started to move, I gave a yank on the rod and was immediately pulled up from my seat by a solid fish.

I fought the fish in to the boat and it measured out 34” just below the 35”-45” slot where the fish need to be released.

Marlyn indicated that that was a pretty decent fish to tag, but since we were filming a show I didn’t want to quit after one fish, so we decided to release it.

We hadn’t gone too far after my fish when just as Mieke pulled on her rod, lifting the weight off the bottom her rod bent over hard.

For a minute or so, we weren’t sure if Mieke had the fish or if it had her as she wasn’t gaining a whole lot on the fish.

It didn’t take her long to start gaining on the fish and when she did, a nice fish came on board, another just below the slot, which also went back in the water.

It seemed like every pass, one of us would hook up and bring a fish into the boat, several were small hammer handles while others we’re larger 40”-41” fish, those in the slot.

There’s some big fish out there as one that weighed 67 pounds had been weighed in at Captain Norms.

Mieke tied into one fish that she could hardly move and after a short battle, the fish decided that he had enough of this and broke her 40-pound line.

Looking around at the 8 boats that were now below the dam, it appeared as if everyone was doing well as it wasn’t uncommon to see one or even two anglers in a boat hooked up and fighting a fish.

Along both shorelines, there were numerous people fishing from shore and they too were having very good luck.

Throughout the year the paddlefish stack up below the dam and will stay there until there until boat pressure forces them down stream or over into the closed area in the fast water below the turbines.

We were finished in a couple of hours snagging a total of 14 fish; with the fish we tagged being just over 30” from the eye to the fork o the tail.

They’ll both be excellent eaters as once cleaned properly, and with no bones in their body, they are one of the finest eating fish around.

Snagging may be a little work, but once you tie into one of these powerful prehistoric fish, you won’t be disappointed as they are one unbelievable fish. Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

YANKTON, S.D. – The allure of holding a prehistoric fish which swam 50 million years before the dinosaurs ruled the world is hard to resist for Mieke Slaba, Wagner, S.D.

Each year she looks forward to pursuing paddlefish below the Gavin’s Point Dam with her father Gary Howey of Hartington, Neb.

Of course they have to be lucky enough to draw one of the 1,600 paddlefish tags issued annually by Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. This year they were.

Mieke is not alone in her quest for paddlefish. Snagging is so popular that special regulations had to be put in place years ago to protect this valuable resource.

Although the chance to catch a really big fish, Nebraska’s state record paddlefish weighs 93 pounds and was caught from the Gavin’s Point Dam tailwaters in 1998 by Kathy Reiman of Yankton, is undoubtedly one of the reasons. Another is that this fish is incredibly tasty, if you remove all the red meat from the fillets.

And in late fall, paddlefish congregate by the thousands below the dam, jammed up here during a prespawn migration urge eons old.… Continue reading