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Published Sunday August 14, 2005 Fun but no thrill BY LARRY PORTER
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - Ryan Othling of Lincoln returned from a Mexico fishing trip last weekend and still had one day of vacation.

>Ryan Othling battled the bighead carp for 20 minutes and thought he had either snagged a paddlefish or caught a big catfish.

So last Monday, Othling headed to his brother's place on Middle Island Lake near South Bend, Neb., to try for largemouth bass.

Othling was fishing from his brother Roger's pontoon boat with 6-pound monofilament line and an ultralight rod and reel. He had just switched from a topwater lure to a No. 4 Shad Rap when he felt the tick of a strike.

"I thought I had a little white perch at first," Othling said. "It was coming toward the boat. Then it turned and started taking off. I thought, 'Well, it's sure not a white perch.'"

Othling battled the fish for 20 minutes and thought he had either snagged a paddlefish or caught a big catfish.

"My brother snagged what we estimated was a 100-pound paddlefish this spring right in the same area where I caught this fish," Othling said.

But Othling's fish proved to be far less glamorous than a paddlefish or even a catfish. He finally got the fish alongside the pontoon boat and groaned when he saw that it was a carp.

"I didn't know if it was a grass carp, a bighead carp or another kind of carp," he said. "I just knew it was some kind of carp, and it didn't belong in there. I wanted it out of the lake."

Othling reached down, grabbed one of the fish spears that are always on the pontoon and jammed it into the carp.

"I would have never been able to land that fish if I hadn't happened to have a gig with me," he said. "Being on the Platte River, there are all kinds of trash fish in that lake. We do a lot of gigging for carp and gar."

Unsure what he had caught, Othling took the fish to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's headquarters in Lincoln. There he learned that it was a bighead carp. It was about 49 inches long and weighed 53 pounds, 3 ounces, which shattered the state record of 46-8 caught in 2000 by Phil Rainforth of Bellevue in Offutt Air Force Base Lake.

Othling's fish was certified as the state record hook-and-line bighead last Thursday, three days after it was caught.

"I would have much rather had it been a state-record bass, walleye, crappie or even a catfish," Othling said, smiling. "But it still was fun to catch.

"My brother wasn't real happy when he saw the bighead, though. I wasn't, either. The lake association has a private company come in and shock the lake twice a year. To my knowledge, that's the first bighead that has ever come out of there. I hope there aren't any more. Hopefully, it's an isolated incident."

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