DeOtis isn't your typical casual outdoorsman who lucks into a record fish. He worked summers at camps as a naturalist and survival expert, and traps in the fall and winter working for a fur company. In between he camps alone in the wilderness.
His favorite camping spot, a two-mile kayak paddle down the Kettle River from road access, is on a large hole where DeOtis had seen a number of large sturgeon jump. He had caught a number of sturgeon in the three to fifty pound range, but none were as large as his record. Otherwise he might have brought heavier gear than the medium-weight Berkeley rod he used to cast a number 2 Eagle Claw hook baited with a worm and the Garcia Mitchell 900 reel he had filled with 15-pound test Berkeley line.
DeOtis had kayaked in to the perfect record setting. The Kettle, a tributary of the St. Croix River, was the first, and arguably the finest, "wild and scenic" river in Minnesota. It runs clear and cold between walls of sumac, wild roses and ferns not too far from Minneapolis.
"I probably have 20 months of solo camping on the Kettle during the last five or six years," DeOtis said. "I like the Kettle because it's the closest wilderness to the Twin Cities, and it's great for survival-type camping."
Just at dusk that Sept. 11, 1986, night DeOtis pitched his worm bait into the head of the hole where the river widened between its overgrown banks. He braced the rod on a forked stick, wired it in place and attached a bell. Then, before he retired to his tent to work on a book he is putting together on edible plants and survival techniques, he set a number of mouse traps outside his nearby supply tent. This was so mice wouldn't gnaw their way in to his food.
After a couple of traps snapped, DeOtis, now stripped down to underwear and moccasins, grabbed a small flashlight and headed out to empty and reset traps. Suddenly, the rod's bell clattered. DeOtis raced to the rod and cranked in slack, but felt nothing. The rod tip didn't even twitch. So DeOtis reset his traps and headed back to his sleeping tent. "It was a bit cool," he said, "standing there in my moccasins and underwear. And they kept announcing on the news to look at the Northern Lights." Only when he looked back toward the river did he notice his rod was bent, but still. He ran to the rod and set the hook, but nothing happened.
