A Georgia angler utilizing gentle deal with for white bass hauled in a a lot greater prize at Lake Oconee in March. Utilizing a customized Skunkless Rod constructed by his brother, Koob Moua boated a 70-pound blue catfish that set a brand new lake report—all whereas utilizing 8-pound check fishing line.
Moua, of Monroe, Georgia, was fishing along with his brother, Jacob, and their neighbor Justin Pledger on March 22 when he hooked into what he initially believed to be a snag. “I assumed I bought caught, and after I bought caught I simply freakin’ whipped it, and he took off,” Moua says in a video of the 35-minute battle posted to YouTube.
“After I began preventing the fish, I assumed he was going to spool my reel,” he instructed Georgia Outside Information. “I assumed it is likely to be a catfish or a giant striper, however I had no concept it was a catfish that dimension. I simply needed to see what it was. After about half-hour, the fish began popping as much as the floor, however he wasn’t able to stop but. I noticed the large tail flop out of the water and questioned: What is that this factor? We simply stored preventing it till the fish bought drained.”
Moua was utilizing a 7-foot medium-action mannequin rod spooled with 8-pound P-Line Floroclear line and pulling a white-and-chartreuse rooster tail spinnerbait. “We weren’t prepared for that fish,” Moua instructed Georgia Outside Information. “I used to be afraid the road was going to snap and the rod, too. It was bending to the acute.”
Because it turned out, the rod and line weren’t the one gear pushed to the restrict. The online the boys used to get the fish into the boat solely held about half of the blue’s 51-inch size, and the video reveals the deal with bent by the heft of the catfish.
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The official weight of the fish, recorded on the Georgia Division of Pure Assets station in Social Circle, was 70 kilos, 2 ounces. That beat the Oconee report of 69 kilos, 7 ounces set in 2016 by Wayne Tatum. The state report blue catfish in Georgia is a 111-pound fish that got here out of the Chattahoochee River in October 2020. Not far behind that monster is the Worldwide Sport Fish Affiliation 8-pound line class report for blue catfish set in 2005 in Tennessee: 109 kilos, 12 ounces.
Moua’s massive blue is the second lake-record catfish caught this spring at Oconee, a 19,000-acre reservoir in central Georgia inbuilt 1980. Rob Allgood reset the flathead report with a 62-pound, 10-ounce fish he caught on March 11 whereas fishing along with his father.
