One man and his brother-in-law went out for a day’s worth of fishing and returned as new record holders!
Gene Fleming of Phenix City, Alabama, was fishing with his brother-in-law Billy Leffinghamwell on Goat Rock Lake in Georgia on February 23. Goat Rock Lake sits near the Alabama-Georgia border, and the Chattahoochee River flows into it.
Yes, that’s the same Chattahoochee that Alan Jackson sings about in his hit song!
While Fleming and Leffinghamwell were down yonder on the Chattahoochee, they got a bite from a massive fish. The two men tried to reel the fish in, but it was quite the battle…one that lasted nearly 35 minutes.
“It took me about 25 minutes just to pull him up to the boat where I could see what he was and another 10 minutes where we could get just his head in the net,” Fleming told Georgia Outdoor News. “It took both of us to get him in the boat.“
Fleming also told GON that the fish drug them 300 yards before they managed to get it in the boat.
There’s a reason why Fleming and Leffinghamwell faced such a struggle…the blue catfish they reeled in tipped the scale at a whopping 63 pounds!
You can see the fish in the picture below.
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The men’s catch ended up being a Goat Rock Lake record setter. It’s that huge!
While the Goat Rock Lake catfish is a monster, no doubt, it isn’t uncommon for catfish to get that large. Tune in to the video below to see another massive catfish someone else caught in the past.
The catfish you’ll see in the video was 84 pounds, and was caught while noodling. Meaning the person who caught it did so by using their arm as the hook and the bait!