What a catch! Phenix City man hauls in 63-pound blue catfish near Columbus
It’s a big one.
Gene Fleming, of Phenix City, Alabama, caught a whopping 63-pound blue catfish Feb. 23 at Goat Rock Lake on the Chattahoochee River north of Columbus.
Georgia Outdoor News reported that Fleming caught the fish just before dark on an 8-pound test line. Fleming and brother-in-law Billy Leffinghamwell took off from Sandy Point boat ramp just below the Bartletts Ferry dam.
It was a slow day of catfishing, Fleming told the website, but the men were able to catch nine stripers. Around 5:30 p.m., they anchored on their last hole of the day — a little creek mouth just below the ramp. That’s when it started.
“When that joker hit that fluke, I thought I had hooked the biggest striper I had ever hung,” Fleming told Georgia Outdoor News. “When this fish came out of the creek and hit the main channel, he almost stripped me dry.”
The chase took the men 300 yards and lasted about 35 minutes. It took both men to lift this fish into the boat, Fleming said.
The blue catfish commonly weighs 20 to 40 pounds and can reach well above 100. Where mature populations exist, 50-pound catfish are not uncommon, according to Catfish Edge, a blog run by Chad Ferguson, a Texas-based catfishing expert.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources reports the fish is native to the Coosa River basin. The fish has been introduced in the Chattahoochee, Flint, Ocmulgee, Oconee, Altamaha, Satilla and Savannah River basins. The largest blue catfish caught in Georgia came from the Altamaha River in 2017, and the fish weighed 93 pounds.
The fish Fleming caught measured 4-feet, 2-inches. He took the fish to Lee’s Crossing Feed and Farm in LaGrange, and on the scales, the fish weighed exactly 63 pounds.
“It was dead in the middle of it,” said store owner Donny Turner in an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer Friday. “It was about the size of my grandson.”
This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 6:00 AM.