On April 11, fishing guide Jim Lynch was out on Lake of the Ozarks doing what he does best: getting people hooked up on big paddlefish. But their day on the water took a sinister turn when one of his clients hooked and landed a fish that had clearly been mutilated by someone.
Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic images, including explicit language.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” says Lynch, who works for All Out Guide Service. “For a second I thought it was just a weird injury caused by a boat propellor. But once I saw what the cuts in the fish spelled out, there was no doubt that someone had carved into the spoonbill’s side.”
This was the first of several mutilated paddlefish that have since been caught and reported by anglers on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks. A few of those fish have had obscene messages carved into their sides. One carving included the acronym “MDC,” leading Lynch to believe that the person has “an axe to grind” with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Lynch and other guides say this is all very disturbing — not only because of the cruelty, but because American paddlefish are a threatened and federally protected species.
“My client who caught the first fish was appalled,” Lynch tells Outdoor Life. “She said she’d never come here to fish again.”
These fish (also called spoonbills) have been protected in Missouri since 1972, and their harvest is strictly regulated on Lake of the Ozarks. Anglers there are only allowed to keep two legally-sized fish per day, and they must retain any legal fish they catch as part of their daily limit.
“All the fish I’ve seen with carvings have been legal fish,” says Lynch. “Which means that this person or persons doing this are catching a spoonbill, cutting it up, and then releasing it illegally hoping someone else will catch it. It hurts both the fish population, as they can die from those kinds of injuries, as well as any angler who catches the fish later, [since] they have to keep it with the carvings on it.”
As one of the last places in the country with a healthy population of these prehistoric fish, Lake of the Ozarks is a destination fishery. People travel there from all over the world for a chance at landing a trophy spoonbill, and Lynch says it takes at least eight to nine years for a paddlefish to grow to that size.
“I’ve had clients from Alaska, Colorado, New York, and practically every place under the sun who come here to catch a paddlefish,” Lynch says. “It’s a place known through all the United States for big paddlefish … and for some terrible person or persons to be doing something like this is sickening. It’s like a black eye on the fishery.”
In an effort to help find who is responsible, Lynch and other local guides have been pooling money to fund a reward. They are now offering $9,000 for information that leads to an arrest.
“I really hope the reward helps to find whoever is doing this,” says Lynch, who is also a former detective. “Because what they’re doing is disgusting and extremely cruel.
“It’s just a crazy situation … There’s something obviously wrong with this person,” Lynch continues. “I just don’t understand why someone would do this, and it reminds me of my days in law enforcement when you saw something horrible and thought, ‘How is this possible of a human being?’”
Read Next: Guide Who Puts First-Time Angler on World-Record Paddlefish Says It’s a ‘Dream Come True’
The Missouri Department of Conservation is especially concerned with these mutilations. The law enforcement division is currently doing its best to bring the individual (or individuals) to justice.
“We are very aware of the situation and are doing everything we can to try and find whoever is responsible,” MDC spokesperson Maddie Est tells Outdoor Life. “Our agency has received the reports about the paddlefish that had been carved into and have also seen the screen shots and Facebook posts about these incidents. We are currently investigating the matter, and we highly encourage anyone with information to please call our Operation Game Thief Number at 1-800-392-1111. Any tips you have can be done completely anonymously and we answer the line twenty four hours a day.”
Read the full article here
