Roger Phillips: The mystery of the ParkCenter monster revealed
Everybody loves a good fish story, and I am no different. Whether it’s a tall tale about a big one getting away, or the wild story behind a mounted fish or photo hanging on a wall, we all get to live vicariously through the angler telling the story.
I recently heard a great fish story that’s worth sharing. It’s the story of a giant fish tangling with the wrong guy, and like any good fish story, there’s an element of mystery to it.
The setting is a pretty mundane place — ParkCenter Pond in Boise. It’s a murky pond surrounded by a sprawling lawn littered with goose poop. It’s a place where most anglers consider a good fishing day to be catching a few cookie-cutter rainbow trout regularly stocked by Fish and Game.
Larry Lyke isn’t one of those anglers. He set his sights a little higher.
In 2008, Fish and Game started stocking channel catfish in local ponds, including ParkCenter. The cats range from a few pounds to double digits and can put a precarious bend in a trout rod and break a light line like it’s floss. They’ve undoubtedly provided some trout anglers with stories about the big ones that got away.
Lyke, 58, decided he wanted to catch those cats, but instead of hooking a worm, sinking it to the bottom and hoping for a bite, he studied his quarry. He talked to fish biologists, read books and magazines, and searched the Internet. He gleaned information from as far as Europe, where anglers consider bait fishing for so-called “rough fish” a high art. He didn’t just try to catch a catfish, he tried to understand them, and soon he was landing and releasing catfish by the dozens.
Last year alone, Lyke said he landed 83 catfish between 3 and 14 pounds from local ponds, but mostly from ParkCenter.
“I’ve caught several that I know I’ve caught before,” he said.
But one fish was regularly beating him. It would take his bait, make a beeline across the pond and snap his heavy line “like it was string.”
He suspected it was a sturgeon that was rumored to be living in the pond. He said he’d seen one jump before.
Lyke said he hooked the mystery fish about eight times in the last two years, and the end result was always the same — a busted line and a fish story.
He named the fish Goliath, and he believes there may actually be several sturgeon in the pond, but he didn’t know because he couldn’t land any.
“It’s been a quest,” he said.
Last month he got an unlikely lucky break. He badly tangled his reel and respooled it with heavier line.
The next time he went fishing, he hooked Goliath again. This time he knew exactly what he had on the line because it jumped.
“When he came up and breached, I was like ‘oh, my God, I can’t believe that’s on my line.’ ”
A driver passing by stopped, and a man and his wife watched the battle, which Lyke said took about an hour.
And it was a battle. Lyke is retired and on Social Security disability because he has osteoarthritis in his hips and degenerating knees. He had to sit on his chair midway because standing and fighting the fish was too exhausting.
When he landed it, at right, the couple watching took a few photos before Lyke released the sturgeon, which he estimated to be 6 feet. Formulas for estimating fish weights put a sturgeon that length at about 125 pounds.
So Lyke proved the identity of the monster from the depths of ParkCenter Pond, but more mystery remains.
“We don’t know for sure where the fish came from,” said Jeff Dillon, regional fisheries manager for Fish and Game. There are several theories. Fish and Game stocked some small sturgeon below Lucky Peak Dam in 1990, and the only one ever seen or heard of by the agency was found stuck in a canal near Caldwell 14 years later. It was tagged before release so Fish and Game could trace the fish’s origin.
There is a link between ParkCenter Pond and the Boise River, but a sturgeon would have to pass through diversions and culverts to get there.
Dillon said someone may have illegally transplanted the fish from the Snake River or possibly moved it from a private pond because you can buy hatchery sturgeon.
Lyke said he heard a few sturgeon were removed from the pond at the MK Nature Center while it was being repaired and moved to ParkCenter. But Dillon said Fish and Game has no record of that happening, which is standard practice for stocking fish.
So the mystery, and the fish, live on, and Lyke is convinced there’s more than one sturgeon in ParkCenter. But unless two people catch them at the same time, the mystery will remain.
Dillon reminds potential sturgeon anglers they must abide by special regulations wherever they fish for sturgeon, such as using barbless hooks, catch and release, and not removing them from the water. But he doesn’t mind anglers trying to catch Goliath (or his peers) again and have their own great fish stories to tell.
He also figures the sturgeon has already produced many other fish stories about the big one that got away.
“I get a chuckle thinking about how many Snoopy poles have been jerked out of some kids’ hands,” he said.
Roger Phillips: 373-6615
Statesman outdoor writers Pete Zimowsky and Roger Phillips alternate columns on Sunday. Look for Zimo’s next week.
Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/04/02/1948834/roger-phillips-the-mystery-of.html#ixzz1IRc8VlSo
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