A record year for anglers

Two Spokane-area anglers said there was a downside to landing the fish that put their names in the record books.

For Bryan McMannis, it was a matter of timing.

The 22-year-old Newman Lake resident was looking forward to enjoying a beautiful April day on the upper reaches of Lake Spokane (Long Lake) catching bass in the good company of his girlfriend and fishing partner, Emily Wuitschick.

But they were just getting their casting arms warmed up when the trip came to an abrupt end.

McMannis hooked a huge northern pike, which he landed after 15 minutes despite the lack of appropriate tackle and the hissy fit his English setter threw when he began hauling the monster fish into a boat that was already crowded.

“I didn’t realize how big this fish was until I got it in the boat and looked and thought, ‘Oh, man!’ and Emily was even more excited than I was,” McMannis said.

She talked him out of releasing the fish and they headed to shore and drove to Safeway to get it weighed.

When they put the fish on the scale, McMannis said his heart sank: “It showed 32 pounds. I knew that wasn’t enough. But the butcher looked down and said, ‘Look, it’s so big the tail is still dragging on the table.’.”

After the entire fish was weighed and certified at a record 34.06 pounds, the excitement eventually waned. McMannis reflected on the day and concluded that like so many good things in life, the experience wasn’t perfect.

“I’d just got there and started fishing,” he said in a statement only a hard-core angler could understand. “It kind of made me mad, actually, to go out bass fishing and have to pull up and leave so soon. I mean, I hadn’t even been fishing for 10 minutes.”

George Schmidt of Spokane Valley almost didn’t even report the record 6.27-pound tench he caught in Sprague Lake in June.

Tench, revered in Europe but virtually unappreciated in the United States, are covered with a thick coat of mucus that makes them appear to be without scales. 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.

“I was fishing for walleye with a jig and a piece of nightcrawler,” Schmidt said. “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.

After getting the fish weighed, Schmidt put the tench in his freezer and then wondered 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.

He thought he’d 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.”