Kimberly Feltner and her husband, Shawn, braved the wind and rain on Sept. 28 to fish the Ohio River with their good good friend and native info, Chris Souders. It was the day after Hurricane Helene struck the world, and the river was swollen from the entire heavy rain. This bump in current helped get the fish transferring, and the three anglers have been discovering some blue cats near Stage Good, West Virginia, the place the Kanawha River joins the Ohio.
“It was almost 9 a.m. and we’d merely caught our second small catfish after I heard one factor,” Souders, who runs Slunger Cat Exterior, tells Exterior Life. “Actually one in every of my Penn reels’ drag was screaming and I turned to see the rod it was on was doubled over on the boat stern.”
He says Feltner, who lives in Indiana, jumped on the rod instantly. She fought the catfish whereas he cleared their totally different strains.
“I had six totally different deep strains out,” Souders says. “I was lucky to get them in sooner than they tangled.”
Souders saved his 20-foot aluminum boat anchored whereas Feltner labored on the fish. It ran deep a variety of events, and about 10 minutes into the battle, Souders says Feltner was about ready to give up. Nevertheless she stayed with it prolonged enough to tire out the huge blue cat and get it near the boat, the place Souders netted it after which rolled it over the gunnel.
“I knew instantly it was going to be a state measurement file,” says Souders, who grew up fishing the Ohio River and lives in Oak Hill. “I’ve caught on the very least 4 blue cats which have been almost record-length fish, and I knew Kim’s fish was longer.”
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After taping the catfish, Souders known as his good good friend Ryan Bosserman, who works as a fisheries biologist for the West Virginia Division of Pure Property. He stuffed Bosserman in and requested him to satisfy them on the Robert C. Byrd Lock and Dam for an official measurement.
“It was a ship a 30-minute run there, and Ryan measured and weighed the fish on the spot.”
The blue cat’s official weight was 64.15 kilos and shy of the current state weight file — a 69.45-pound fish caught by Michael Drake in 2023. Nevertheless at 50.82 inches from tip to tail, it was merely prolonged enough to edge out that exact same fish for the state measurement file. (Drake’s fish was roughly a third of an inch shorter, at 50.51 inches prolonged.) Bosserman estimated the blue cat’s age at spherical 20 years earlier.
Souders says Feltner’s state-record catfish ate a scale back mooneye bait that was fished near the underside on an 8/0 hook. He says the fish was near a ledge drop in the middle of the river, and he thinks the heavy rain from the hurricane helped set off a chew by rising the river’s current.
After getting the fish’s official measurements, the three anglers returned to the place it was caught and launched it once more into the Ohio River. They accomplished out their day sturdy, catching and releasing some further blue cats, along with one which Souder thinks went 40 kilos.
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“We launched all our fish,” Souders says, “They’re rather more useful throughout the river than in a cooler.”