Nebraska Fisherman Hooks 90-Million-Year-Old Fossil During Fishing Tournament: 'Catch of a Lifetime'

Fisherman Andy Moore might not have won the tournament he had his sights set on earlier this month, but he'll likely remember the experience for the rest of his life.

According to NBC affiliate WOWT, Moore was participating in a tournament in South Dakota when his line got caught on a rock.

"I pitched my jig, and it's horrible. It's like way left, and I'm like, 'Oh man,'" Moore recalled to the news station.

"I get up to [the rock], and I'm like, 'Oh wow! That's kind of cool,'" he said of the rock, which appeared to have part of a skeleton embedded in it. "I thought it was a big catfish skeleton or a deer skeleton. Something told me to take a picture of this."

Moore took pictures of the rock and posted them online, and the images soon caught the attention of people who recognized the skeleton as a fossil.

"It was like, 'Uh dude. Did you know that's a 90-million-year-old fossil that's in that picture?'" Moore told WOWT. "I'm like, 'What?' "

He added to ABC affiliate KETV: "Another guy called: 'Dude do you realize what you have there?' I'm like, 'No.'"

Moore told the news station that he sent a picture of the rock to the Army Corps of Engineers, the group that controls the river bed, and they sent it to a retired geologist.

The geologist and Moore used GPS coordinates from the pictures he took to locate the rock in the river, and the geologist identified the object as a 90-million-year-old fossil of a bulldog fish.

"He jumps out of the boat. You know, he's in his boots. And I'm just like, he's just like, 'Oh my god,'" Moore recalled to KETV.

Per Field and Stream, the fossil will be displayed at the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center in Nebraska.

Moore told KETV that fossil discovery was simply "the catch of a lifetime."