Spear fisherman nets another record catch
Jonathan Ganshorn’s favourite river spot yields a fine kettle of fish.
It’s served up a couple of catches for his wall, too — including a second record-breaking fish pulled out of the South Saskatchewan River last month.
“I can’t tell you exactly where my secret spot is, but I was about an hour outside Saskatoon, close to my cabin ...,” Ganshorn said this week before launching into his big fish tale.
Ganshorn — a spear fisherman — caught a 23.9-pound northern pike, which after verification, gives him another spot on the International Underwater Spearfishing Association record book. His first appearance there was 2014, when he speared a 13.3-pound walleye; that mark still stands.
The IUSA documents spearfishing world records, with 219 different fish currently logged on its website.
Ganshorn says he and brother Tom leave the big pike alone, but they made a pact two years ago that if they found a potential recordbreaker, they’d make a run at it.
Last month, Ganshorn had company at his cabin, and he and his brother went snorkelling into the river to spear a few walleye for supper. But a few minutes later, he got, shall we say, distracted: A large pike went into a weed-bed area, he went into check it out, and saw an even bigger one.
“We’ve been watching for that one fish for two years,” Ganshorn recounts.
“I saw this monster sitting there in the weed bed. I took careful aim; I knew she was really big, and I took a good shot at her.
“I knew I shot her well, and she started to drag me into the deep a little bit. They get pretty powerful when they ’re that size. A few years prior, the first day I ever went out spearfishing, I got into a fairly large pike, and she drug me around all over the place. She was snapping at me, I had to push her away. That was a real fight. I made sure I was shooting awfully good on this one, because it’s a little different when you’re in the water with them. This one wasn’t long; she maybe pulled me 10 feet, then settled out right away.”
Ganshorn knew what he needed for the record — he recalls the previous standard as sitting around 15 pounds — and he put it on his scale soon after exiting the water.
“Mine,” he says, “was a definite step up.”
Ganshorn first got into spearfishing a half-decade ago. He’s learned a lot about how to carry himself in the water when he’s on a quest.
“You present yourself almost as a piece of debris; you’ve got to move really slow,” he says. “There’s certain tricks of the trade that let you get a little closer to the fish than some other people.
“When you get in the water with them, it’s a whole different appreciation — it’s absolutely stunning. You see the personality of the fish, see how they react ... I was swimming with a school of pike (last month), 15 to 25 pounds, and it’s honestly like you’re in Jurassic Park — these dinosaurs, almost. They take me to an area where there’s hundreds of walleye going back and forth on the rocks. You don’t shoot anything; you just sit back in awe, and appreciate how incredible all this stuff is.”
Ganshorn has a taxidermist lined up to work on his latest catch, and his name now appears twice on the IUSA’s world-record page.
Ganshorn also gets bragging rights on his brother, again, he adds with a laugh.
“We’d decided a couple of years back, when we found out we had the potential for a world record ... we decided well, we’ll maybe shoot one, just to tell the grandkids someday that grandpa went and shot a world record,” he says now. “Just to have that story, and to have it up on the wall ...”
When you get in the water with them, it’s a whole different appreciation — it’s absolutely stunning. You see the personality of the fish, see how they react.