An eight-person crew of bowfishermen taken an annual trip to Western Kentucky, and this June they were fishing from three boats. They were having a successful week targeting carp, gar, and paddlefish in the Tennessee River when Andrew Vest spotted a good spoonbill.
It was midday on June 19, and Vest was easing along in his 18-foot Grizzly Tracker boat with friends Cody Mann and Kayla Decker.
“I looked down and there was a nice paddlefish cruising along near the surface just 15 feet away,” Vest tells Outdoor Life. “I drew my ‘Leviathan’ DeadWake bow and let my arrow fly. I hit the paddlefish a little back toward the tail. But I was able to wind it in pretty quick and used a hand gaff to get it into my boat.”
Once the paddlefish was in the boat, Vest noticed a tag in its lower jaw. He inspected it and saw it was from the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks Department. He got the tag number and called fisheries officials right there from the water.
“I couldn’t believe the fish had come all the way to Kentucky from South Dakota, so I was pretty excited when I got ahold of South Dakota fisheries,” said Vest, a 30-year-old electrician from Grinnell, Iowa. “The were pretty shocked, too. Then I called the Kentucky fisheries department and they were stunned the fish could have traveled that far, too.”
Vest did some research online and traced the fish’s journey from when it was tagged as a 15-pounder and released on June 21, 2023, into the Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam at Yankton, South Dakota.
“I used an app to trace how far that paddlefish would have traveled, and it was 922 miles,” Vest continued. “We didn’t weigh it, but we shoot a lot of paddlefish and we believe it was about 30 pounds. It was about double the size of the fish when it was tagged two years earlier in South Dakota, according to a letter I got verifying the tagged fish from the fisheries folks there.”
South Dakota fisheries biologist Gary Knecht sent Vest a letter thanking him for reporting the tagged fish. Knecht explained that the department has tagged more than 10,000 paddlefish in recent years to gather data on their movements, timing, and long-distance travel patterns.
Vest says state biologists have recorded similar long-distance journeys by paddlefish before, but that it’s extremely rare and has occurred only a few times.
“I know my tracing of that paddlefish is not completely accurate, and it could have covered even more miles,” Vest said. “But that fish swam down the Missouri River to the Mississippi River, then to the Ohio River and into the Tennessee River.”
How the fish navigated dams, locks, and other obstacles remains a mystery. Vest suspects high spring water, flooding, and other natural events likely helped it reach Western Kentucky.
Vest plans to make a European-style mount of the paddlefish’s distinctive “spoon” bill as a keepsake. He’ll include the tag and frame the verification letter from biologist Gary Knecht.
“We eat all the paddlefish we get during our bowfishing trips,” says Vest. “Paddlefish are great tasting when fillets are cut into cubes, soaked for a while in 7-Up, then breaded and fried.”
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