After a grueling 15-minute battle while fishing solo, angler Micka Burkhart successfully netted and boated a 122-pound blue catfish from Tennessee’s Cumberland River on June 28. The fish is a pending state record that should top the 118.7-pound record mark, which Burkhart set himself at Barkley Reservoir last September.
The whole fight can be viewed on a video posted to Burkhart’s YouTube channel, with the action climaxing as Burkhardt breathlessly pleads with the fish and promises to release it if he can just get it in the net.
Burkhart’s monster blue officially weighed 122.3 pounds and measured 57.5 inches long, with a 42.25-inch girth. It ate a white bass head fished on 40-pound-test line. After transporting the fish in a large livewell on his trailered boat to get official measurements, Burkhart returned to the Cumberland River and successfully released it back to the Stewart County stretch in northwest Tennessee near the Kentucky and Missouri borders.
In a Facebook post, Burkhart reported that he also caught 69- and 72-pound blue cats on the same day. That’s a mighty fine day of fishing.
The IGFA all-tackle world record blue catfish weighed 143 pounds, even. It was caught from Kerr Lake, Virginia by Richard Nicholas Anderson in June of 2011.
Watch Burkhart catching the new state record