A fourteen year old Metro boy has been snagging some big catches recently from the banks of the Papio Creek.
Jacob Cooper told WOWT 6 News that he comes down to the creek almost every day to fish and work towards his dream of being a professional angler. "Being sponsored to fish that sounds like the life."
Cooper has caught some impressive muskie in an unlikely spot, under the 84th Street bridge in Downtown Papillion. "Ten muskie total in the last five days of fishing, from 44 inches and 24 pounds, to 35 inches and ten pounds."
Muskie that big aren't usually found in the Papio Creek, so that begged the question, "How did they get there?"
Greg Wagner with Nebraska Game and Parks tells NewsRadio 1110 KFAB that although muskie in the creek is a little odd, it's not unheard of. "Folks are wondering, why are muskies in there? But they're most likely from Zorinsky Lake and they're alive and they're swimming and he's catching them."
Wagner says conditions are just right in the stream for the muskie. "They're 40 to 50 inches long, there's a lot of bait fish, prey fish swimming in there. And it's cool, well oxygenated water."
Cooper says he hopes his pictures and videos of these big muskie help him earn a few Master Angler Awards this year. He chooses to release the fish back into the stream, instead of mounting them as a trophy. "And if they still don't believe me, I don't care, I know what happened."