A young fisherman from the Chester area used his bare hands to catch a fighting 32-inch northern pike at Lake Vermilion in northeastern Minnesota.
Kalob Powell, 18, was checking his fish on a stringer hanging from a dock and spotted the predatory pike with its jaws clamped on one of them.
Kalob Powell with his catch.
He reached down, grabbed the big sharp-toothed fish, and pulled it free.
“I was confused because I didn’t expect it,” he said. “I put my right hand in his gills to lift him onto the dock.”
Powell didn’t have a fish scale, but various length-to-weight conversion charts indicate that his northern weighed seven to eight pounds.
“I was shocked,” said his mother, Heather Seaman, who was nearby when he caught the pike, a popular game fish and tenacious fighter.
Powell, who has been fishing since he was a child, was visiting his grandparents at their Lake Vermilion cabin last month when he overpowered the fish.
A neighbor who came to the dock shortly after the bare-handed catch told Kalob, “You’re now a Vermilion legend.”
