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| NAS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species |
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Common Name: paddlefish
Taxonomy: available through 
Identification: Robison and Buchanan (1988); Page and Burr (1991); Etnier and Starnes (1993); Jenkins and Burkhead (1994); Mettee et al. (1996).
Size: 221 cm.
Native Range:
Mississippi River basin from southwestern New York to central Montana and south to Louisiana; Gulf Slope drainages from Mobile Bay, Alabama, to Galveston Bay, Texas. Formerly in the Lake Erie drainage in Ohio (and possibly lakes Huron and Michigan). Extirpated from Great Lakes basin, Galveston Bay and Sabine River drainages in Texas, and Calcasieu drainage in Louisiana (Page and Burr 1991).
Nonindigenous Occurrences: Introduced into the Flint River below Newton, Georgia. The fish have dispersed downstream to Lake Seminole and the Apalachicola River, Florida (R. Ober and F. Paruka, personal communication). Paddlefish were also stocked in several waterbodies throughout Texas in 1992 including Lake Wright Patman, B.A. Steinhagen Lake, Caddo Lake, Lake O' the Pines, and the Livingston, Sam Rayburn, and Toledo Bend Reservoirs (Waldrip 1993).
Means of Introduction: Approximately 1,200 fish, 10-15" in length, escaped an aquaculture facility along the Flint River in Georgia, during Tropical Storm Alberto in early July 1994 (Ober and Paruka, personal communication).
Status: Four or five fish have been collected from the stretch from Newton to the Apalachicola River. One individual was collected in the spring of 1997 and measured 30" (Paruka, personal communication). Two were collected below Jim Woodruff Dam on the Apalachicola River in 1997 and weighed 10-11 lbs (Ober, personal communication).
Impact of Introduction: Unknown.
Remarks: Voucher specimen: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office at Lake Seminole has one of the paddlefish mounted on their wall (Ober, personal communication).
Etnier, D. A., and W. C. Starnes. 1993. The fishes of Tennessee. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN.
Jenkins, R. E., and N. M. Burkhead. 1994. Freshwater fishes of Virginia. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD.
Mettee, M. F., P. E. O'Neil, and J. M. Pierson. 1996. Fishes of Alabama and the Mobile Basin. Oxmoor House, Inc. Birmingham, AL. 820 pp.
Ober, R. - Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Albany, GA.
Page, L. M., and B. M. Burr. 1991. A field guide to freshwater fishes of North America north of Mexico. The Peterson Field Guide Series, volume 42. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA.
Paruka, F. - USFWS, Panama City, FL.
Robison, H. W., and T. M. Buchanan. 1988. Fishes of Arkansas. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR.
Waldrip, L. 1993. 1992 fish stocking report. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. January 8, 1993. 1993: 9-12.
Other Resources:
FishBase Fact Sheet
Author: Pam Fuller
Revision Date: 4/20/2006 Citation for this information:
Pam Fuller. 2009. Polyodon spathula. USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database, Gainesville, FL.
<http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.asp?speciesID=876> Revision Date: 4/20/2006
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