World Record Catfish: Blue, Flathead, Channel, Wels, Mekong Giant

The world record catfish is a wels of 297 lb 9 oz (134.97 kg), caught by Attila Zsedely in Italy’s River Po on March 11, 2010, the heaviest catfish in the International Game Fish Association’s book. North America’s best is the 143 lb (64.9 kg) blue catfish Richard Nicholas Anderson took on a piece of chicken at Kerr Lake, on the Virginia–North Carolina line, on June 18, 2011. A heavier fish was netted, not angled: the 646 lb (293 kg) Mekong giant catfish Thai fishermen took in 2005 is the heaviest catfish ever weighed, and it is in no angling book. Neither is the 292 cm (9 ft 7 in) wels released in Poland in October 2025.

The channel catfish record has stood since July 7, 1964, and it was caught on a lure. Sixty years of bait fishing have not beaten a bucktail jig.

Every catfish record, species by species

The figures are the IGFA all-tackle records; the wels and Mekong stories come from news reports. The IGFA keeps records for a dozen more catfish, from the gilded catfish of the Amazon to the Amur catfish of Japan.

How were the three American records caught?

The 143 lb blue. Anderson was drifting chicken on Kerr Lake, the Roanoke River reservoir on the Virginia–North Carolina line. His fish beat Greg Bernal’s 130 lb Missouri River blue of 2010 and Tim Pruitt’s 124 lb Mississippi River fish of 2005. The Virginia record had passed from a 102 lb James River blue of 2009 to Tony Milam’s 109 lb Kerr Lake fish of March 2011. Anderson’s was weighed at Mecklenburg Farm Supply in Chase City, and four days later UPI reported it “now sitting in a freezer.”

The 123 lb flathead. Ken Paulie was crappie fishing, with a minnow on a Zebco 33 spincast reel and 14 lb line. The light tackle raised eyebrows for years, until Kansas biologists examined the fish. They confirmed the weight and put its age at 22 years or more, most likely a male. A 139 lb 14 oz Arkansas River flathead of 1982 tipped certified scales but came off a snagline: the folk record, not a rod-and-reel one. The flathead catfish page has the state records below Paulie’s fish.

The 58 lb channel. W. H. Whaley’s fish from Lake Moultrie, the lower of the Santee-Cooper lakes, took a bucktail jig, not bait, and nothing has come close since. Channel catfish in natural waters take two to four years to reach a pound, and a fish twice the common maximum needs an extraordinary water and an extraordinary life. The channel catfish page has the growth figures.

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Which states have a 100 lb blue catfish?

At least twelve states have a certified state-record blue catfish over 100 lb, and the list says more about where the giants live than the single world record does.

The flathead list is shorter, and its newest entry came this year. On June 10, 2026, Joe Driggers of Florence caught a 113 lb 7 oz (51.5 kg) flathead from the Big Pee Dee River in South Carolina. He was fishing a piece of cut bait on 50 lb mono, at one in the afternoon in 100 °F (38 °C) heat, and he thought it was a blue. He landed it by hand, by the gills. The state weighed and certified it at Lands End Marina in Georgetown, almost 30 lb over the old South Carolina record. No rod-and-reel record sits between that fish and Paulie’s 123.

What are the giants abroad?

The wels (Silurus glanis) is Europe’s catfish and the only one that rivals the Mekong giant. Zsedely’s wels was 96.46 in (245 cm) long and Anderson’s blue 57 in, which shows how much more fish a wels carries per inch. Italy’s Po and Spain’s Ebro hold introduced populations in warm, food-rich water, and both have given up giant wels. Rybnik Reservoir in Silesia is warmed by a power station’s discharge, and wels there regularly pass 2 m (6 ft 7 in).

The Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) is critically endangered. That is why its rod-caught record comes from a resort lake and the wild giant of 2005 from a net. The redtail of the Amazon and the sharptooth of South Africa’s Orange River complete the catfish that have passed 90 lb on a rod and reel.

Is there a 200 lb catfish? Yes, two species: the wels, 297 lb 9 oz on a rod, and the Mekong giant, 260 lb on a rod and 646 lb in a net. No North American catfish has passed 143 lb on a rod and reel.

Weight, line class or length: which record is it?

An all-tackle record is the heaviest fish of a species caught by one angler on any line up to the 130 lb (60 kg) class. It is what people mean by “world record,” and every North American fish in the first table is one.

A line-class record is the heaviest fish of a species on a given breaking strength of line, in classes from 2 lb to 130 lb. The fish must weigh at least half the class to count. The blue catfish line-class list holds stories worth repeating:

• Charles Ashley Jr.’s 116 lb 12 oz fish from the Mississippi River in Arkansas in 2001, on 16 lb line and Spam.
• Zachery R. Lovelady’s 109 lb 12 oz blue from Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, in 2005, on 8 lb line.
• Landon Evans, fifteen, with a 117 lb 8 oz blue on cut shad at Lake Gaston, North Carolina, in 2016: the junior record.

An all-tackle length record is the newer category, for fish that go back alive. It goes to the longest fish of a species, measured on an official IGFA measuring device and photographed. The fish is then released “so that they swim away on their own and in good condition.” It must be 2 cm longer than the fish before it.

This is where the two giant wels ought to sit, and neither does. Alessandro Biancardi’s 285 cm Po fish was taped on a mat in front of ten witnesses and released unweighed, which ruled out a weight record. The IGFA never listed it as a length record either; when Outdoor Life checked the book after the Polish catch, it found no length record for the wels at all. The Rybnik fish has a second problem. Two anglers fought it for an hour and a half, and the IGFA rule is that the angler must “hook, fight, and land or boat the fish without the aid of any other person.”

How is a record certified?

The IGFA’s rules are public, and five of them decide a claim before the fish is in the boat. The fishing terms define line class, length record and certified scale.

1. Weigh it on land, on a certified scale. A government agency or an accredited body must have certified the scale within the past twelve months. A fish weighed in the boat does not count, and estimated weights are not accepted. A reading between two marks is rounded down, and the weight of the sling is deducted. Disinterested witnesses “should be used whenever possible.”
2. Keep the tackle. The application needs the entire leader with its hooks, the double line, and at least 5 m (16.5 ft) of the main line closest to it. The IGFA tests the line itself, so a line-class record stands or falls on what the line actually breaks at.
3. Photograph everything. The full length of the fish, the rod and reel, the scale, and the angler with the fish.
4. Beat the record by enough. Under 25 lb, a new fish has to be 2 oz heavier. Over 25 lb, it has to be heavier by one-half of one percent: 8 oz on a 100 lb record, and about 11½ oz on Anderson’s 143.
5. File in time, alone. Claims from US waters must reach the IGFA within 60 days of the catch, 90 days from anywhere else. Nobody but the angler may touch the rod, reel or line during the fight.

No rule on this list can make a netted fish a record, which is why the 646 lb Mekong giant is the heaviest catfish ever weighed and not an angling record. Villagers took it in a net on the Mekong in northern Thailand on May 1, 2005, and it was reported that June. Researchers led by Zeb Hogan of the World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic confirmed it as the heaviest freshwater fish then on record. A negotiated release fell through, and the fish died. The IGFA’s own Mekong record is a 260 lb fish from a fishing-resort lake at Krabi, caught on a rod in 2010.

The Missouri River records show the process working. Greg Bernal’s 130 lb blue of July 20, 2010 went from the boat to a feed store in New Melle, the nearest state-certified scale. Biologist Sarah Peper was watching: “When the scale finally balanced out at 130 pounds, we were in shock.” Daniel Mayer’s 121.1 lb Kansas fish of May 15, 2025 was weighed on a certified scale with a state biologist’s help and accepted as the record in July.

Where will the next record come from?

In-Fisherman’s Rob Neumann asked the question the summer Anderson’s fish was certified. The lower Mississippi and the Missouri, he wrote, are “key players in the conversation.” He called the big Heartland rivers “perhaps the most consistent legacy of giant fish.” Lake Texoma, Santee-Cooper, the Tennessee River, the James River and the reservoirs of Southern California “put up points on a fairly regular basis.”

The fifteen years since have proved the first half. In 2025 the Missouri gave Kansas its 121.1 lb record and Iowa its 105, fifteen years after Missouri’s 130. The Chattahoochee, not on his list, produced a 110-pounder in 2020. The James, which gave Virginia its 102 lb fish in 2009, is still on the list. For the wels it is simpler: the Po and the Ebro, and now Rybnik.

What bait caught the biggest catfish?

Not one fish on this page was caught on anything clever: chicken, cut carp, cut bream, cut shad, cut skipjack, Spam, a minnow. The one lure on the list is Whaley’s bucktail jig.

The pattern is a big, fresh bait from the water’s own forage, fished after dark where the current delivers food to deep cover or a channel edge. The line has to be heavy enough to turn the fish before it reaches the wood: Bernal used 40 lb line, Driggers 50 lb mono. The catfish rigs page draws the slip-sinker, three-way and Santee Cooper rigs those baits ride on, and the best catfish bait page ranks the baits by species. Paulie was fishing for crappie and Driggers thought he had a blue, so carry a net that fits a fish you are not expecting.

How old is a 100 lb catfish?

Old. Paulie’s flathead was at least 22, and Missouri’s biologists estimated Bernal’s blue at 20 to 30 years. South Carolina’s first estimate for Driggers’ flathead is 23. Virginia lists a maximum age of 25 years; on the James, Animal Diversity Web has blues of up to 3 lb (1.4 kg) at eight and 20 lb (9 kg) at eleven.

A 100 lb blue is a fish of twenty years or more, in a river that fed it well the whole time. That is why the length record exists at all, and the blue catfish page has the rules that protect the biggest blues.

Compare the world record largemouth bass, which has stood since 1932. The blue catfish record has been broken four times since 2004, because the fish is still colonizing new water, and the next one is probably swimming now. The catfish hub has the rest of the family.

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• The temperature that shuts channel cats down while blue cats keep biting all winter
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