GRAND FORKS, N.D. _ Billy King noodles for catfish down in Oklahoma, so he's used to pulling creatures from the murky depths, but the first-time ice fisherman didn't know what to think about the silvery behemoth with big scales he pulled from a hole in the ice Saturday night, April 6, on Lake of the Woods near Springsteel north of Warroad, Minn.
It didn't look anything like the walleyes, perch, pike and tullibees King and his fishing partners had been catching throughout the day, he recalls.
"I had no idea what it was," King, of Pryor, Okla., said last Monday in a phone interview. "Being from Oklahoma, it looked like a white carp to me."
King had landed a pending new Minnesota state record lake whitefish, a species that while native, is not exactly common along the south shore of Lake of the Woods. The big whitefish weighed 13.57 pounds on a certified scale and measured 29 { inches long.
The existing state record lake whitefish, caught March 21, 1999, on Leech Lake near Walker, Minn., weighed 12 pounds, 4 ounces and measured 28 { inches, records from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources show.
