Ryan Spaniel recoiled when he stared into his net at the unusual fish he caught in the Columbia River near the cable bridge.
"It scared the living hell out of me," Spaniel said, laughing. "When we first saw it, we thought it might be a sturgeon. But the coloration was too wacky. Then we thought it might be a sculpin, a world-record sculpin. We didn't know what it was."
Spaniel, 20, of Kennewick, eventually learned he landed a burbot: A member of the cod family that is found in colder, deep-water lakes farther north.
It's believed to be the first burbot caught in the Tri-Cities, said Paul Hoffarth, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish biologist based in Pasco.
"I get surprised every year by a fish someone's caught here," Hoffarth said. "We've had a tiger muskie, a northern pike, a brown trout, a bull trout. But this is the first burbot I've heard of."
And it was a long-lived, and apparently healthy, burbot at that. Spaniel learned his catch was 35 inches in length, weighed 8.85 pounds and was estimated by a fish and wildlife biologist who examined it to be at least 14 years old.
Now, it is on ice in his freezer awaiting mounting by a taxidermist. Spaniel, who is studying biology at Columbia Basin College, eventually plans to have it displayed at Sportsman's Warehouse in Kennewick.
"It's a big deal for that old fish to have made it this far down here," Spaniel said. "It'd be nice to have it put up as an educational display."
An avid angler, Spaniel hooked the burbot Sept. 16 while fishing for smallmouth bass with his father, Craig, and grandfather, Frank. Ryan was bottom-bouncing a Gitzit when his line stiffened.
"I thought I'd struck bottom, then it just took off," he said. "It made one good run, and then that was it. It didn't put up a fight after that. Then we got it up near the boat, and we didn't want to put it in. We just didn't know what it was."
So the trio returned to shore to find out what they had. Their first stop was Templeman's Market in Kennewick to weigh it. And after that, they went to Sportsman's Warehouse to see if anyone could identify the elongated, brownish fish with the chin whisker and dorsal and anal fins that run from the middle of its body nearly to the tail.
An employee told them he thought it was a burbot, and suggested they go to the local Department of Fish and Wildlife office in Pasco. A biologist there confirmed the identity.
Burbot, which are predators and prefer colder water, are found in 11 deep lakes of the Columbia River system, including Banks, Bead, Chelan, Cle Elum, Roosevelt, Rufus Woods and Sullivan, according to the department. The state record is 17.37 pounds, caught in Bead Lake in Pend Oreille County in 2004.
Hoffarth said he doubts there are resident burbot in the river. "If we had a population (in the Columbia), our sturgeon anglers would be catching them," he said.
So Spaniel's burbot likely made its way downstream by skirting dams during releases of water, or by swimming between turbines.
"Turbine blades are large and they turn slowly, so most fish survive," Hoffarth said.
Spaniel, who plans to enroll at the University of Idaho next fall and major in wildlife management, has always dreamed of catching a record-setting bass. But he's delighted with the rare lunker he landed.
"It's a rarity and definitely something to be proud of," he said. "I caught possibly the oldest burbot in Washington state, and the first in the Tri-Cities. This was a once in 10 lifetimes thrill.
"Think of all the fishermen we have who fish the Columbia, and no one came across it. There were no other hook marks on it, either. Just think of all the hooks it had seen over the years."