When fishing the Ole’ Miss you never know what you might catch, especially fishing next to Dustin Stewart’s boat! The above attachment is a picture of the huge buffalo fish caught on 3/26/03. Not having a big scale, I estimated the weight over 40lbs. Yes, it hit on a “Zone-R” Nuckle Ball Jig/minnow.
Wow! Nice fish… How long did it take to horse that one in?
Mike,
That was one big fish. My clients thought it was a blast watching you land that thing. I headed to another spot and lent my net to another boat to land a 24lb Pike caught on a jig and minnow 
. It was a healthy fish. Just after the pike was caught one of my guys caught a turtle 
.
Saw some weird cathces yeasterday out there 
that is one UGLY fish. 
from the picture it looks to be almost a pinkish color. i always thought they were a darker color brown/black?
Ron, the fish was pretty lethargic, it came right up from a 25′ hole and swam around the boat until we made it mad trying to net it, the second netting attemp was successful as we got the head in the net and grab the tail to hoist the beast into the boat.
Jake, the fish was wearing it’s Easter colors! LOL……
I need to find out what kind of buffalo fish it is, may be someone can help me here. I think I made a big mistake by not weighing the beast as I was already was told the following:
Buffalo, Bigmouth 41-11 38.5 / 29.5, Mississippi River, Goodhue, 05/07/1991
Buffalo, Black 20-0.5 34.5 / 20, Minnesota River, Nicollet, 06/26/1997
Buffalo, Smallmouth 13-4 28 / 22, Mississippi River, Ramsey, 11/11/1993
I don’t know what the WI records as I’m a WI lic. holder.
Mike, Are you sure it wasn’t a Zone-R and corn??????
What a beast!
Tuck
That is one UGLY fish! Nice lips 
klh
They fight a lot better if snagged or speared. Hooked in the mouth, they come in like a wet dishrag.
It was probably a bigmouth. You would probably have needed an expert to look at it as there are often very subtle differences such as the number of anal fin spines or counting the number of fin rays.
Ugly don’t matter if the fish is BIG!!! I’d have to agree that the fish was pushing 40lbs. What a horse……………..a horse with Mick Jagger, grammy lookin’, leave a hickey on the state of Ohio sized lips!
absolutely no doubt…. what you have there is a good ol’ big mouth buffalo…… and a darn BIG one too….
probably set a lineclass world record too no doubt!… if ya want to feel worse!!
Dustin,
Any chance you got a pic of that pike while you were down there?
No , I totally forgot about getting a pic of that fish…..I was more worried about getting the slimer smell out of my net than anything else…. 
rmartain, here is a better side shot of the fish.
most definitley a bigmouth. smallmouth have downward pointing mouths – the bigmouth have the forward pointing mouths that this fish has. They are also more likely to feed on baitfish due to the forward mouth instead of the downward one. Black buffalo have a body like a bigmouth but a downward mouth and are very rare.
I agree. In that size range, there is no such thing as ugly…unless you put it on the grill. I hope you gave her a kiss before gently placing her back in the water.
Your picture is exactly why there is no better place to fish than the river. You never know what or how big what’s on the end of your hook is going to be.
what an ugly fish for sure, but sometiems the buffalo that we hook into put up a pretty big fight, they make a lot of runs
Whenever someone says “What an ugly fish!”, I wonder what the fish think when they see one of us?
Does that classify as “thinking like a fish”? LOL!
Judging from the position of the mouth, I would agree with others that it is a bigmouth. Could not find my old taxonomy key book to locate the fine points, but since the fish is back swimmin, that probably would not have helped anyway.
Here is a link that show pictures of all 3 varieties. There are clickable links below each to get more info and a larger picture.
Nice fish Mike, its always fun to catch a big fish no matter what it is. How did that hook on the Zone-R handle the fish? did it straighten it out a little?
Mike, I mounted the 2nd largest carp ever caught in
Iowa a few years back. It weighed 36 lbs., was 36″ long,
and had a girth of 28″. Your pics look bigger than the one
I did. Man, he’s a PORKER!
Jeff, the fish did straighten the hook out some, I had tighten my drag down some so I could get the thing up and after the first attemp to net it, it makes a run and darn near pulled me out of the boat!
Wayne, that’s one big carp, do you have a picture of it to post? The first thing my wife would say if I mounted something like that is; I hope it’s water proof because your not hanging it in this house!
That fish is the best example of why I always return to the Mississippi River. You never know what you going to catch and you never know how big. Great fish; was the 24 lb. Northern released; hope so. My son and I are now into grapahite reporductions. A little more expensive but a good artist can make them look real and the fish lives. I have a good guy for the reporductios but don’t want to advertise for him on this site. However, if anyone is interested E mail me at [email protected]. He has done an 11lb Walleye for a friend of ours, a 20 lb Northern for my daughter and 2 fifteen inch Crappies for my son; all last year. You will notice I am still trying to catch up with the kids.
Best Regards
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
