I think the tow truck was used for this guy.
Posted on 05/24/2005 5:00:04 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
ALTON, Ill. - It sounds like the sort of tale Mark Twain might have cooked up: A man fishing in the Mississippi River hauls in a blue catfish roughly the size of a sixth-grader. But this is no fish story. Early Sunday, Tim Pruitt caught a 124-pound blue catfish.
To get a sense of just how big that is, the state record holder was a mere 85 pounds and the world record holder tipped the scales at 121 pounds, 8 ounces.
Now, Pruitt, whose fish has already been weighed in the presence of a conservation police officer and measured by a biologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, is expected to submit documentation to the International Game Fish Association so that it can be certified a world record holder.
Once that is done, the catch should be approved as the world's largest blue catfish, replacing the current champion that was caught Jan. 16, 2004, in Lake Texoma, Texas, said Becky Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the association.
Pruitt's fish, measuring 58 inches long and 44 inches around, was swimming below the Melvin Price Lock and Dam on the Mississippi River at Alton on Saturday night when it grabbed Pruitt's line. The two struggled for more than half an hour, and at one point the fish dragged the boat carrying Pruitt, his wife and a friend before Pruitt could reel it in.
The fish has been kept alive and will be on display in a tank at the Cabela's Outfitter store in Kansas City, Kan., according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Pruitt, 33, of Godfrey, told the (Peoria) Journal Star's outdoors columnist that he considered releasing the fish in the river but decided to donate it to Cabela's "because I thought it might be neat to give people a chance to see a fish that massive."
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On the Net:
Illinois Department of Natural Resources: http://dnr.state.il.us
International Game Fish Association: www.igfa.org/
let's fry up a mess of Hush Puppies to go along with that
~
I think the tow truck was used for this guy.
I love it when great minds think alike.
Great catch and great post.
Gonna be a Kansas vs Texas shoot out (Splash, the previous big blue, at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center will be be put on a better diet).
Once upon a time I had a newspaper-clipping photo of them.
I'm gonna need a lot more lemons.
Thats cool, I'd like to see it myself....
Ted? Is that you?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Kansas City, Missouri is where the fish will reside. Sort of lives up to the name of being the Show Me state.
Yassar Arafat reincarnated?
OOPS! I need a little geography lesson, I was thinking of Bass Pro in Springfield.
You say noodling,
I say grabbling,
let's call the whole thing
cats whiskers.
What about doodle socking?
RTFA (read the fine article)
Can you imagine trucking that monster all the way across the state? How would you keep it alive for three plus hours of move time?
That's alright, I had guys wearing skirts at the wrong NDHS in Connecticut in a separate post a day or two ago ;)
Would be something to see either of those fish, tho. By the way, Chattanooga has a great fresh water aquarium.
They transport live fish all of the time from hatchery to stream. Just have the route planned and there would not be any big problem. They transport whales, dolphins and other large sea critters all of the time.
It's a catfish, it could probably walk...
Impressive fish and catch. My grandfather pulled in a ~112-pound cat from the Missouri River at Jefferson City when he was 12 in the year 1898. Took him several hours to land it and a little help from some of the other fishermen there at the time. I don't believe there were any records kept at the time, but I did see a short newspaper article that was written at the time.
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