A North Carolina-based fishing rod company announced what may be a pending state-record blue catfish earlier this month. The details are thin, but Catch the Fever reports the fish, caught in Kansas, weighs 18 pounds more than the current state record.
“We’ve just been informed Danny Mayer may have landed the new Kansas State Record blue cat 121 lbs of absolute giant on a Catch The Fever rod,” the company wrote in a May 16 Facebook post. “If verified, this could be a up to a $25,000 fish [sic] through our State Record Program. Stay tuned!”
Mayer did not immediately respond to an interview request, but a Facebook user named Daniel Mayer posted a photo in the comment section. “Here’s the exact weight,” he wrote above an image of a digital scale display that reads 121.10 pounds. Crucially, the rest of the scale and the catfish aren’t included in the image. There are no details on whether the scale is certified, either.
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks confirmed to Outdoor Life that its agency recently received a record application for the species, but stopped short of acknowledging that catfish was Mayer’s.
“We have had a submission for a new record blue catfish, but we cannot substantiate it yet,” KDWP chief of public affairs Laura Rose Clawson says. “It’ll be about a month before we would have anything to say one way or another about that record.”
A 102.8-pound blue cat — caught from the Missouri River in 2012 — currently holds the Kansas record.
Despite the uncertain status, the post was widely circulated beyond Catch the Fever’s Facebook audience, causing some confusion among users who are unfamiliar with the brand’s payout program. The rod company — not the state of Kansas — offers a prize of up to $20,000 for eligible customers who break a new state record, by weight, for certain species. While blue catfish are eligible for Catch the Fever’s program, Mayer’s catch is not eligible for a payout because the fish wasn’t released.
“He did not get the payout, because the fish did die after he caught it,” Catch the Fever office manager Amanda Hanson tells Outdoor Life. “I know we’ll do a story on it to bring more awareness to the catfishing community to release the fish alive.”
Read Next: These Photos and Videos Reveal Why Maryland’s Blue Catfish Must Be Killed
As with many trophy fisheries, releasing big blue catfish is a hot topic among the diehard catfishing community. A fisherman in West Virginia just broke the state record with a blue cat he says has been caught three times — and set a record each time. While releasing a big fish when possible makes sense if it was caught in its native range, the practice is much more controversial where blue catfish are invasive, such as in Maryland and Virginia.
While Mayer missed out on what could’ve been a huge payday, he could still clinch the state record if the fish’s weight checks out and his catch meets other record criteria. Fish do not have to be released to qualify for the Kansas record book.
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