While fishing on Lake of the Ozarks with Jason Smith and his Smith’s Fishing Adventures guide service out of Warsaw, Mo., St. Patrick’s Day brought some world-class angling luck to angler Chad Williams (second from right) and his group of angling friends in the form of a world record paddlefish weighing 164 pounds, 13 ounces. The big Show Me State catch overtakes the previous world-record mark of a 164-pound paddlefish, caught on Oklahoma’s Keystone Lake back in June 2021. (Photo courtesy of Smith’s Fishing Adventures / Warsaw, Mo.)
For several years now, Oklahoma has had a stranglehold on the world record paddlefish benchmark with a handful of Sooner State specimens one-upping one another in rapid-fire succession.
But not anymore, not since Olathe, Kan., angler Chad Williams snagged what appears to be a new world record for the species thanks to Williams’ 164-pound, 13-ounce paddlefish pulled from the Lake of the Ozarks on Sunday, March 17, 2024.
Barring any hiccups in the certification and paperwork process, Williams’ behemoth spoonbill seems poised to become the new world record maintained by the