Monroe County man lands record-breaking flathead catfish
Codie Carlson was bowfishing early in the morning of June 29 at Plum Creek in Monroe County when he took in the fish that weighed 64.46 pounds and measured 45 inches.
"I thought I was about to shoot a channel catfish for dinner. Turns out, I guess we do have flathead catfish in these waters," Carlson told state officials.
Carlson's catch soundly beats the previous state record size for that species – a flathead catfish caught in 2022 on the St. Joseph River in Berrien County. The 2022 fish, caught by Lloyd Tanner of Hobart, Indiana, was 53.35 pounds and 43 inches in size.
DNR fisheries biologist John Buszkiewicz, who works out of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' Lake Erie Fisheries Management Unit, did the verification.
It's likely that Buszkiewicz and his crew noticed Carlson's fish when conducting a survey in 2020 at that location. At the time, the DNR said, a flathead catfish weight 55 pounds and measured 43 inches.
Michigan's state records for fish are recognized by weight. Those who catch a potential state record fish should contact a DNR fisheries biologist as soon as possible and follow the listed procedures for check in. The fish must exceed the currently-listed state record for that species, be weighed on a certified commercial scale, and verified by a DNR fisheries biologist.
The state records for this and other fish in Michigan can be found at the DNR's Master Angler website. This flathead catfish is the only current record-holding fish out of Plum Creek. The other record-holder fish found in Monroe County is a bigmouth buffalo caught in 2020 in Lake Erie.
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