World Record Catfish

World Record Catfish Are Always A Hot Topic

I get dozens of emails a month with people asking about world record catfish. Many of them are forwarded emails of this photograph and people asking if I have seen photos of this world record catfish. The answer is yes and about 10,000 times so please refrain from sending it to me again.

This photo often accompanies email text that talks about the fish shown in the photo being caught at Lake Texoma Texas. There was a world record catfish caught at Lake Texoma but this is not the picture of the Lake Texoma fish. We have covered the catch here in this article titled “biggest catfish ever caught in Texas“.

If you require further validation that this photo is not the fish caught at Lake Texoma you can look here on truth or fiction or here on snopes

For some reason people love looking at pictures of big cats and talking about them. With this in mind I have done some research on world record catfish and compiled some information for this post.

Specifically for this article I am not going to cover all species but the species relevant to the United States which are blue, channel and flathead catfish.

Record Blues

The current certified record was caught on the Mississippi River. You can view more information here in our post about the biggest catfish ever caught.

World Record Blue Catfish

Update July 2010 – New World Record Blue Catfish 130 Lbs

Record Channel Catfish

The current record is listed as weighing 58Lbs and was caught on Santee Cooper reservoir in South Carolina by a W.Whatley. I had to do some serious google searches to come up with some photos of this one but it appears that this is the picture of the 58lb fish. This is what is listed by the IGFA.

World Record Channel Catfish

Record Flathead

The current record flathead is listed as weighing 123 lbs and was caught on Elk City Reservoir in Kansas by Ken Paulie. I found several references online that it was caught on a Zebco 33 reel with 12 lb test fishing line. This is impressive on several different levels.

I am sure a lot of people are looking for information on records by state. You can get this information by going to the state fish and game, parks and wildlife or department or natural resources website. It appears that most all of them have this information online now. I don’t think I am up to googling every single one for three species as that would be a major undertaking. I did find a website that appears to have the state records on their websites but I am unsure of the accuracy of this information, here is the link, but again I am not sure of these are actually the numbers or information.