Codie Carlson had just gotten off work from his airport job south of Detroit, Michigan. It was about midnight, and he decided to walk along nearby Plum Creek to bowfish.
“My girlfriend Shelby Philipski wanted me to go so I could do something fun after work,” Carlson tells Outdoor Life. “I was walking along the creek, and I saw a tail wave out of the water. I have a flashlight on my bow, and saw its mouth and whiskers, so I knew it was a catfish.”
The 34-year-old archer drew his bow, aimed at the fish 18 yards away, and released. When the arrow struck the fish, gallons of water sloshed out of the creek.
“Hell, yeah, dinner!” Carlson yelled, thinking it was channel catfish.
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His arrow passed through the fish, and with his flashlight he could see it take off down the creek. It wasn’t long before the fish spooled him, taking all the line off his bow reel. So, Carlson dropped his bow, grabbed the line with the catfish still attached and chased it down the bank.
“It ran into some thick lily pads, and I thought my arrow had pulled out,” Carlson says. “The water is muddy, and I couldn’t see the fish … I gave the line some slack and it came up out of the pads 12 feet away out in the water.”
In his flashlight beam, Carlson could see that his arrow was just barely holding the cat – with the arrowhead barely under its tough skin. He panicked and jumped into the creek to grab it.
“I’m 6 feet, 4 inches, and in my full work clothes and boots. And when I got the fish by its mouth, I was up to my belt in water,” Carlson explains. “But I had him. He fought me a few times as I was grabbing him, and he chomped down on my hands. But I wrestled him out of the water and onto a nearby roadway.”
Carlson says he dropped to his knees and started screaming with joy when he saw how big the catfish was. He then realized it was a flathead, and not a channel cat.
“I was freaking out on the creek bank, and I had to call Shelby to tell her.”
He thought the fish may be a state record and quickly walked with the flathead to his nearby truck, where he had a scale to weigh it. The scale maxed out at 50 pounds, and Carlson knew he had to get it weighed on certified scales for it to be an official Michigan record.
At that time of night, there was nowhere open where he could weigh the fish. But the next day he drove to Redford, where the fish was weighed on certified scales at Standard Scale and Supply. The 45-inch-long flathead catfish had a 35-inch girth and weighed a whopping 64.46 pounds.
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Carlson used a Muzzy compound bow and a two-prong AMS fiberglass arrow to take his fish, which has just been accepted by the Michigan DNR as the new state-record flathead. It easily tops the previous record of 49 pounds, 12.96 ounces, which was taken from the Maple River in June 2012 by Rodney Akey. Interestingly, Michigan does not separate its fishing records according to the method used, as many other states do, which means bowfishermen and rod-and-reel anglers are competing for the same records.
A DNR biologist checked and confirmed that the fish was a flathead, and Carlson says they’ll be checking for its age next.
“I honestly didn’t know flathead catfish were in that creek,” says Carlson, who plans to have a replica mount made of his fish. “I just wanted something for dinner, and I’m gonna eat my record fish, too.”
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