A Georgia angler received the surprise of a lifetime when a giant blue catfish devoured his striped bass lure and led him on a 300-yard, 35-minute chase.
Gene Fleming was fishing with his brother-in-law on Goat Rock Lake last Sunday when the unexpected bite occurred. Both anglers had baits on the bottom for catfish, while casting lures with lighter lines for striped bass.
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Fleming was using only 8-pound-test line when the 63-pound catfish struck.
“I thought I had hooked the biggest striper I had ever hung,” Fleming, who is from nearby Phenix City, Ala., told Georgia Outdoor News. “When this fish came out of the creek and hit the main channel, he almost stripped me dry.”
There was almost no chance of landing the fish on such light line while anchored, so Billy Leffinghamwell, the brother-in-law, hurriedly pulled anchor and started to reel in the other lines while the catfish plowed down the Chattahoochee River. (Goat Rock Lake is on the river above Columbus.)
“He started reeling as we went, but we were dragging catfish rods behind us, and the catfish was pulling us down river,” Fleming said.
The anglers caught up to the catfish 25 minutes later.
“It took me about 25 minutes just to pull him up to the boat where I could see what he was and another 10 minutes where we could get just his head in the net,” Fleming told Georgia Outdoor News. “It took both of us to get him in the boat.”
The catfish, weighed at Lee’s Crossing Feed and Seed, measured 4 feet, 2 inches, and boasted a 36-inch girth.
For the sake of comparison, the all-tackle world record for blue catfish stands at 143 pounds. But that fish, caught in 2011 at Buggs Island, Va., was landed with 50-pound-test line.
–Image courtesy of Gene Fleming