Spearfisherman snags 177-pound monster, then has to get it out of ice-covered lake
A slow day of ice fishing on a Wisconsin lake quickly heated up when a spearfisherman snagged a 177-pound monster, according to wildlife officials.
James Gishkowsky was fishing at Lake Winnebago on Tuesday, Feb. 14, when he speared something, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said in a news release.
Fighting to pull the creature out of the ice-covered lake, Gishkowsky called for help, he told Fox 11.
“It’s a rush when you get something like this,” he told the outlet.
The effort was worth it. Gishkowsky caught a “record-setting” sturgeon, wildlife officials said in the release. The female fish weighed 177.3 pounds and was about 6.5 feet long, officials told McClatchy News in an email.
“This is the 7th largest fish ever speared from the Winnebago system,” officials said in the release. The female fish had about 20 to 30 pounds of eggs and would have spawned this year.
The largest sturgeon caught in the Lake Winnebago area was snagged in 2010, weighing 212 pounds and reaching 7 feet in length, officials said.
Gishkowsky, who had only snagged three sturgeons before this fish, described the catch as “a once in a lifetime” experience, Fox 11 reported.
He wasn’t the only one stunned by the catch.
“Come on, that’s not a sturgeon, it’s a shark,” one person commented on a photo of Gishkowsky’s catch shared on Facebook by WISN 12 News.
“That’s a monster fish,” someone else wrote.
“Did you need a crane to pull it out?” another person asked.
Looking at the huge fish prompted others to express their concerns.
“And this is why I don’t swim in lakes,” one user wrote.
Sturgeons are armor-plated, bottom-dwelling freshwater fish, according to a factsheet from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The species is rare in the U.S, having never recovered from overfishing in the late 1800s.
The Winnebago water system in Wisconsin has one of the largest population of sturgeon in the country, officials said. The area’s annual sturgeon spearfishing season is closely monitored.
Lake Winnebago is about 75 miles northwest of Milwaukee.
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Spearfisherman snags 177-pound monster, then has to get it out of ice-covered lake."
