Europeans would love this big fish

George Schmidt has narrowly missed his calling by the span of an ocean or two. Last week at Sprague Lake, the Spokane Valley angler landed a state-record fish of a species that’s revered in, say, England. “The biologist told me that if I’d have caught a record tench in Europe I’d be on TV,” Schmidt said. “If this fish ever made TV in Spokane, they’d have to have a contest to see if anybody knew what it was.” John Whalen, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department regional fisheries manager, confirmed the tench weighed 6 pounds, 4 ounces and was in 201/2 inches long. “It was full of spawn and its belly was gigantic,” said Schmidt who stopped a good continent or so from gushing over his trophy catch. “They are the slimiest devils I’ve ever seen.” Tench are covered with a thick coat of mucus that makes them appear to be without scales, but they are revered for sport and eating in Europe. The U.S. government imported tench from Germany and introduced them across the country to provide a food source that never caught on with the American palate. The all-tackle world-record tench, weighing 10 pounds 3 ounces, was caught in Sweden in 1985. Schmidt’s Sprague Lake tench could be a world line-class record if he were inclined to enter it. But even in record proportions, tench are among the fish Americans love to hate. They are a non-native species that competes with traditional gamefish. They are the bottom-feeders we can’t imagine looking up to. Americans don’t like competition when it comes to their preferred fish species. “I was fishing for walleye with a jig and a piece of nightcrawler,” Schmidt said. “At first I thought I had a big walleye. Boy, it put up a great fight, and then I saw it and I thought it was a big smallmouth bass — it has that shape you know. “But then I saw that big black tail and went, ‘Auuuggghh!’ ” All Schmidt could think about was getting the fish off his hook even though it was easily the biggest tench he’d ever seen. “My fishing partner, Tom Aulik, was the one who said it could be a state record,” said Schmidt, who relented to bring the fish aboard the boat. “But I told him not to net it because it would slime up the net and we wouldn’t be able to use it on real fish anymore or they’d slide right on through.” They landed the lunker with a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Schmidt, 67, is one of those retired guys who fishes more hours in a week than many working stiffs enjoy in a year. I’ve always said these notorious fish harassers shouldn’t get a discount on their season license, they should pay double. But Schmidt disagrees. “We should pay triple,” he argued. He still has faith in Sprague Lake, even though he said it’s not fishing like it did a few years ago. “In 1999, I caught a 161/2-pound walleye out of Sprague,” he said. “It was 35 inches long.” That’s a big memory that doesn’t fade fast in an angler’s mind, even though he fishes twice as long for a fraction of the fish he used to catch. On a June 8 outing, he and Aulik caught two walleye, a smallmouth and the record tench. The next day, they caught four walleye. Period. “I’ve been fishing Sprague since I moved here in 1992, and that lake at one time was the most incredible fishing for perch, bass, walleyes, you name it. Now I can’t tell you what’s going on. The biologists say the bottom is paved with walleye. We marked so many fish on our finder it was incredible, but we don’t know which are walleye and which are tench. “When the walleye were biting a few years ago we could hook 50 to100 a day. Now we’re lucky to get a couple.” Of the six 18- to 22-inch walleyes he and his partner caught during that early-June two-day trip, only two had any remnants of fish in their bellies. “The stomachs were empty in the other four,” Schmidt said, noting that he tends to agree with the theory biologists are suggesting. “I think there’s simply so much feed in the lake the walleyes are just filling themselves with the tons of little stuff that’s down there because it’s probably easier than feeding on bigger fish like they’re supposed to. I mean, these fish are fat; they’re not going hungry down there.” Whalen confirmed that netting surveys show a healthy population of walleyes in Sprague Lake. “We are very aware that fishermen are having trouble catching them,” he said. “We also know the lake is filling up with tench and carp, but we’re not exactly sure what we can do about it.” In 1985, the Fish and Wildlife Department undertook the state’s largest lake rehabilitation, spending $114,000 to treat Sprague with 90,000 pounds of rotenone to rid the lake of carp so sport fish could be stocked. The bass, walleye, trout and panfish released in the mostly carp-free waters flourished into a phenomenal fishery. But the carp have made a comeback, along with the tench, and the sport fishery is suffering, along with the waterfowl that can’t find as much aquatic vegetation in the murky water of shallows fouled by the bottom-feeding fish. “I’m not sure what will happen,” said Whalen, noting that the cost to do a rehab nowadays would be much more expensive than it was 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Schmidt has a lunker in his freezer, and he’s not sure what to do with it. “I don’t have any pictures of me actually holding the fish because I didn’t even want to touch it much less eat it,” he said. “You can’t be disappointed in the way they fight; you’re just disappointed in what they are.” In April, after area angler Bryan McMannis caught the state record northern pike in Lake Spokane (Long Lake), Sportsman’s Warehouse offered to pay the hefty bill for mounting the fish so it could be displayed in the store. Schmidt has heard no such offers for his tench. He thinks he’ll end up burying the state record fish in his yard. “I’m planning to fertilize the bushes,” he said. “But I’m worried that it might kill them.”