Kimberly Feltner and her husband, Shawn, braved the wind and rain on Sept. 28 to fish the Ohio River with their good friend and native information, Chris Souders. It was the day after Hurricane Helene struck the area, and the river was swollen from all of the heavy rain. This bump in present helped get the fish transferring, and the three anglers had been discovering some blue cats close to Level Nice, West Virginia, the place the Kanawha River joins the Ohio.
“It was virtually 9 a.m. and we’d simply caught our second small catfish after I heard one thing,” Souders, who runs Slunger Cat Outdoors, tells Out of doors Life. “One among 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 different traces.
“I had six different deep traces out,” Souders says. “I used to be fortunate to get them in earlier than they tangled.”
Photograph courtesy Chris Souders
Souders saved his 20-foot aluminum boat anchored whereas Feltner labored on the fish. It ran deep a number of occasions, and about 10 minutes into the struggle, Souders says Feltner was about prepared to surrender. However she stayed with it lengthy sufficient to tire out the massive blue cat and get it close to the boat, the place Souders netted it after which rolled it over the gunnel.
“I knew instantly it was going to be a state size report,” says Souders, who grew up fishing the Ohio River and lives in Oak Hill. “I’ve caught not less than 4 blue cats that had been virtually record-length fish, and I knew Kim’s fish was longer.”
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After taping the catfish, Souders referred to as his good friend Ryan Bosserman, who works as a fisheries biologist for the West Virginia Division of Pure Assets. He stuffed Bosserman in and requested him to fulfill 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 present state weight report — a 69.45-pound fish caught by Michael Drake in 2023. However at 50.82 inches from tip to tail, it was simply lengthy sufficient to edge out that very same fish for the state size report. (Drake’s fish was roughly a 3rd of an inch shorter, at 50.51 inches lengthy.) Bosserman estimated the blue cat’s age at round 20 years previous.
Photograph courtesy Chris Souders
Souders says Feltner’s state-record catfish ate a minimize mooneye bait that was fished close to the underside on an 8/0 hook. He says the fish was close to a ledge drop in the midst of the river, and he thinks the heavy rain from the hurricane helped set off a chew by growing the river’s present.
After getting the fish’s official measurements, the three anglers returned to the place it was caught and launched it again into the Ohio River. They completed out their day robust, catching and releasing some extra blue cats, together with one which Souder thinks went 40 kilos.
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“We launched all our fish,” Souders says, “They’re much more beneficial within the river than in a cooler.”
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