MONROE COUNTY, Mich. – An angler recently caught a new state-record fish in Monroe County, officials said.
Codie Carlson, an angler from Newport, was bowfishing in Plum Creek early in the morning on Sunday, June 29, when he caught a flathead catfish that weighed 64.46 pounds and measured 45 inches, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“I thought I was about to shoot a channel catfish for dinner,” said Carlson. “Turns out, I guess we do have flathead catfish in these waters.”
This beats the previous state record that was set in 2022 by Lloyd Tanner, of Hobart, Indiana. That flathead catfish, which was caught on the St. Joseph River in Berrien County, weighed 53.35 pounds and measured 43 inches.
Carlson’s new state-record fish was verified by John Buszkiewicz, a DNR fisheries biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Lake Erie Fisheries Management Unit. Buszkiewicz said he and his team might have caught this same fish during a survey in Plum Creek in 2020.
“I said out loud to myself, ‘What did I hit?’ So, you know, I fight the fish for a good six or seven minutes probably. It runs all the line out of my bow. Pulling it back, it wraps me up I feel the arrow kind of start to rip, and I’m letting the rope kind of slip through my fingers, like drag would be on a fishing reel, so that it wouldn’t just rip straight out when it did the initial run. But once I got it in close enough, I kind of seen how big it was.
Codie Carlson
What to know about state record fish
In Michigan, state-record fish are only recognized by weight, according to the DNR.
To qualify, a fish must:
- Exceed the current state-record weight
- Be weighed on a certified commercial scale
- Be verified by a DNR fisheries biologist
To view the full list of state record fish in Michigan, visit here.