Illinois angler Jason Jackson, while fishing during the recent River Bend Classic Tourney on the Mississippi River, reeled from the depths a monstrous catfish that weighed 105 pounds.
It's believed to be one of the top three blue catfish ever landed, and not too many meals shy of the all-tackle world-record specimen, a 130-pounder caught on July 20 in the Missouri River. That beat a 124-pounder caught on the Mississippi in 2005.
This is big news among anglers in the community of Alton, where the 105- and 124-pounders were caught. But bigger news for record-seekers is that Jackson, an environmental biologist, let the behemoth go after it was weighed, rather than keeping it as a trophy.
"We catch and release all of our large catfish," Jackson, 23, told the Alton Telegraph. "Something that big has to have some great genes and we want to spread as much of that offspring as possible."
Jackson used a river herring as bait and the fight, on 100-pound braided line, lasted 20 minutes.
-- Pete Thomas
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