A 101-pound blue catfish caught by a 15-year-old girl on April 7 is the heaviest blue cat on record for Ohio. The jury is still out on whether it will be certified as a new state record. It was caught on a jugline, and there is no jugline category for Ohio state records.
A jugline is a hook and line suspended beneath a float, such as a milk jug. When a fish takes the bait, the angler then hauls the fish in by hand.
Jaylyn Parker, 15, was fishing with her father, Chuck, and their friend, Jeff Sams, on a tributary of the Ohio River that runs behind Sams’ house. It was her turn to check the lines, and what she found was an absolute monster. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Parker only weighs 117 pounds, and she needed the help of Sams and her dad to land the fish.
The trio kept the fish alive, and it was measured and inspected by an Ohio game warden. It was 56 inches long, with a 39-inch girth, and the official weight taken on certified scales the following day was 101.11 pounds. The fish was then released. The current Ohio state record, caught on rod and reel, weighed 96 pounds. It was caught by Chris Rolph from the Ohio River in 2009. Rolph’s fish measured 54.5 inches.
In Ohio, the state DNR does not keep track of state record catches. Records are maintained by Outdoor Writers of Ohio (OWO), an organization of outdoors journalists. There was a little bit of a stink on the OWO Facebook following the catch, with some posters accusing Parker of catching the fish illegally. Apparently, the state-record issue will be decided on at the OWO annual meeting in late April.
The IGFA all-tackle world record blue catfish weighed 143 pounds. It was caught from Kerr Lake, Virginia by Richard Anderson in 2011.