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Chad Bright of Henderson with the new state record blue catfish for weight and length. –Submitted Photo |
When you talk about the best catfish waters in West Virginia, Krodel Lake in Mason County doesn’t typically come to mind. However, you never know what the water holds and when lady luck is going to look your way.
Chad Bright of Henderson in Mason County found that out on May 5th. While fishing with a buddy at Krodel Lake, he landed the biggest blue catfish ever caught in the state of West Virginia.
Bright normally fishes the Kanawha River, but decided on this day to see what he could do at Krodel because of muddy conditions in the river. He and a friend fished for several hours with no success for bass and trout. He noticed however a fellow angler nearby was catching catfish one after the other. He talked to the man who was more than happy to share information that he’d using hamburger for bait. A trip to the grocery store for high priced ground beef was out of the question. Bright explored a nearby creek where he had observed some sizeable crayfish several days earlier.
"I’ve never used them before, I’ve just heard a lot of people say they work," Bright said in an interview for West Virginia Outdoors. "We fished for a couple of hours without a bite and my buddy gave up to leave and just as he left my clicker started rolling. I gave him time to run and then I set the hook and it took me about 20-minutes to get it in."
Excited with his massive catfish, Bright asked his dad to come over and have a look. The elder Bright noted it was a blue cat and had a regulations brochure in his truck–which revealed it was a potential state record catch.
"He said the record was only 24-pounds, so I went and got my scale and weighed it and my scale was reading 28," said Bright. "I said ‘Man, this is nuts I’ve got a state record here!’ I called the DNR and it ended up being 27-2."
Bright ran to his home five-minutes away, grabbed a cooler, and hauled the monster to the DNR’s district office only a few miles away at McClintic Wildlife Management Area. There, biologist Zack Brown confirmed the weight and length–both state records. The huge catfish stretched 38.85 inches and weighed officially 27lbs, 2oz.
It turned out to be the start of a busy day for Brown who wound up confirming another state record fish later in the day. The state record skipjack was caught that evening at the tailrace of the Robert C. Byrd Lock and Dam on the Ohio River.
Bright’s story however, doesn’t end there.
"When I told the DNR where I caught it, he said there wasn’t supposed to be any blue cats in Krodel,” Bright explained.
Biologists believe the fish was either illegally released into the impoundment or possibly became trapped in the lake following a flood. The fish likely grew rapidly in the food rich lake. It’s diet probably included stocked rainbow trout the DNR puts into the water as part of its regular stocking schedule.
Regulations require that fish be released into the same water where they were caught. However, given the circumstances that Krodel wasn’t supposed to be a blue cat fishery, Bright was instructed to release the fish back into the Kanawha River where it swims to be caught another day.
"I turned it loose and it swam right off,” Bright said.