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Sunday, January 19, 2003

By Deborah Weisberg

A Bradford fisherman celebrated the New Year in a big way. Carl Stoltz, 35, caught a northern pike so huge in the Allegheny Reservoir, Warren County, it appears to have shattered the state record.

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is finalizing paperwork on Stoltz's catch, which was 35 pounds, 48 inches, and had a 21 1/2-inch girth. Once official, it will supplant the current record -- a 33-pound, 8-ouncer landed 23 years ago in the same water by Gerald Enderle of Tioga.

Stoltz, his father Jim, of DuBois, and brother Alan were the lone trio on the lake Jan. 1. They augered a series of 15 holes through 8 inches of ice in the Redbridge area -- their favorite spot -- and hunkered down in the freezing rain. "We never have used a hut. We just dress warm," Stoltz said.

They were fishing in just 4 feet of water, 2 feet from shore. "I've been ice-fishing every weekend here for 20 years," Stoltz said. "I know pike and muskie don't like to chase bait in winter. If you fish shallow, this close to shore, you let them pin your bait between the ice and the banks."

Things started out slowly at 8:30 a.m., but eight perch, two walleye and three hours later, a tip-up rigged with a dead 8-inch shiner on a treble hook and chartreuse twister tail started spinning so fast, Stoltz grabbed the line and yelled to his father to get the gaffe.

"I set the hook, but I couldn't move the line. I thought I got snagged -- there's lots of stumps in that lake," Stoltz said. He was fishing 30-pound Spider Wire. "Then suddenly it came loose! I could feel the fish with its head shaking back and forth and I knew I had something heavy.

"It came near the hole, then took off on a rampage," Stoltz said. "It'd take 20 feet [of line] out, and I'd gain 10. It went on like that for 20 minutes before we ever saw it. I thought it was a muskie until it turned sideways, then I knew it was a northern.

"It was so massive, it took my breath away. But I knew I had to get my composure."

"My dad was scared to death he was gonna lose it," Stoltz added. "I kept telling him not to gaffe him in the side. I didn't want a mark on that fish. I kept saying, 'Gaffe it under the gill! The gill!' "

And then there was the problem of pulling a fish that big through a hole the size of a dinner plate.

"The head on that thing. We couldn't get it turned," Stoltz said. "I'm shaking so bad and here's that eye looking up through the hole and the nose is stuck under the ice."

His father had the gaffe under one gill and Carl got his hands under the other until they finally maneuvered it into a vertical position and hoisted it to the ice. The fish was so heavy, it bent the gaffe. And though, at its fattest part, it was twice as wide as the hole, "it was soft enough we just kinda squished it through," said Stoltz.

"Man, my dad and me, we were hugging each other! I mean, we hunt and fish together all the time."

Stoltz was envisioning the pike on his trophy room wall, near a standing black bear, 150 class buck, and numerous citation pike, walleye, bass and trout.

But he wasn't done yet -- not with a potential state record on his hands and nowhere official to get it weighed on New Year's Day. "We went to three places, but one guy had to blow the snow off his scale and another one hadn't been [calibrated] in nine years," said Stoltz, who left the fish on the ice-covered sleigh overnight and found a state certified scale at a gas station the next day.

While the fish probably had shrunk a bit since it had been caught, news of it had swelled. "The whole town was buzzing," said Stoltz, who manages a water treatment plant. "Everywhere we went people were talking about my fish."

He also called the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, which dispatched waterways conservation officer Pete Mader, who patrols McKean County, to confirm that the fish was a pike. He also pronounced it magnificent.

"Well, it's ugly and beautiful at the same time," said Stoltz. "A fish like this, it's a freak of nature. Then, too, it's a miracle. Reminds you why you're religious."