Ben Erb is a lifelong fisherman and Minnesotan who likes catching bass and walleyes just as much as the next guy. But his secret passion is targeting what others might call “rough fish,” hardy but less glamorous species like gar, buffalo, and bowfin.
“They’re kind of like this untapped resource of unpressured fish,” Erb, a fisheries biologist and graduate researcher at Bemidji State University, tells Outdoor Life. “A lot of them fight hard, and they’re just really fun to catch”
This summer, while exploring the Mississippi River, Erb found the ultimate bowfin honey hole. During one weekend in July, he caught a pile of huge bowfin from his kayak there, including several in the high 20s and a couple pushing 30 inches. He came back weeks later and caught a 31-inch bowfin that was certified Monday as the new Minnesota catch-and-release record.
“I knew this part of the river, it’s pretty close to where I live, and I’d heard of guys occasionally catching a really big bowfin while fishing for perch and crappies. So I just went out in my kayak on a whim, with the afternoon to burn,” he says. “I caught a huge one, but wasn’t really prepared for it with a net or a measuring tape or anything like that. And I was like, ‘Okay, there’s some giants here.’”
The next day he was better prepared with a friend in tow, and they caught a 28, a 29, and a 30.5-inch bowfin. A couple weeks after that, Erb caught a second fish over 30, and when he checked out the DNR’s website that night, he saw that the bowfin slot for catch-and-release records was still vacant. Minnesota has been expanding its catch-and-release program over the last few years, and the DNR established a bowfin category in 2024, with a minimum length requirement of 31 inches.
“So I was thinking, This could probably happen.”
On Aug. 2, Erb and his fishing buddy went back to the spot, a slow and wide stretch out of the main current filled with reeds, lily pads, and tall grass. Erb says bowfin are especially curious — even more so than other predatory fish — and he thinks some of them might have been drawn to their kayaks.
“I don’t know if they think it’s a piece of habitat or what. But a lot of times we’d be sitting there fishing, and all of a sudden you’d hear a swirl like 10 feet behind you,” he says. “If you could find a good gap in the weeds and park your boat there, that’s usually where they’d come find you.”
Erb says that’s exactly what happened with the state-record bowfin, which he watched swim cautiously out of the weeds. He was using a dead shiner rigged on a weightless hook, and he cast right at the big bowfin. The fish shied away at first, so he reeled in and tried again, but he lost sight of the fish’s head as he cast. He could just make out the tail and dorsal fin as his bait drifted toward the fish, and it looked like the bowfin was about to turn on it.
“A lot of times when a bowfin is about to eat something, their dorsal fin just starts going crazy. It undulates, almost like an eel or something — it’s super cool,” Erb explains. “So, its fin started doing that and then it just stopped. I didn’t feel a bite or anything, I just tightened up and felt a little bit of pressure. And then I swung, and she was on.”
He says the battle was a little disappointing for a bowfin, which have a reputation for being strong and scrappy fighters. The fish thrashed a few times, and then rolled over on the surface, where he netted it. (He says the 30.5-incher he caught from the same spot pulled 10 times as hard as his state record.)
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After putting the fish on a measuring board, where it hit the 31-inch mark on the nose, they released the state-record bowfin into the Mississippi. A release video they recorded shows the fish swimming off strong into the weeds.
“If you like fishing for predator species, there’s really nothing you shouldn’t love about bowfin,” Erb says. “They’ll hit all sorts of different tackle, and they fight like crazy. They’re just an awesome game fish.”
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