100-Pound Cat On 8-Pound Test
California angler Noy Vilanysane must have been more than a little surprised when he hooked into a 102.9-pound blue catfish while fishing a bass tournament on San Diego’s Lower Otay Lake in late October.
According to the website SDFish.com, Vilanysane was fishing a 4-inch paddletail swimbait on a spinning rod with 8-pound test line when he caught what turned out to be a new lake record blue catfish. On such light tackle, it took the angler more than an hour to land the huge fish. He took it to the docks, had it weighed on the tournament scales and released it before finishing the tournament.
The previous lake record blue from Lower Otay weighed 98.45 pounds. That record had stood since 2007. The California state record blue catfish weighed 113.4 pounds. It was caught at San Vicente Reservoir north of San Diego in 2008. The world record blue catfish was caught in 2011 at Kerr Lake in Virginia. It weighed 143 pounds.
So, while Vilanysane might not have broken a state or world record, and the big catfish did not help him win any cash in the tournament, there are very few anglers in the world who can claim to have caught a fish heavier than 100 pounds on 8-pound tackle.