George Thompson has been a fishing and hunting guide for more than 20 years. But on Oct. 12 he decided to do a bit of fun fishing with his family instead of guiding clients.
Aboard were his two sons, 3.5-year-old George Jr., 2-year-old Jayden and their mom Sara Schroder.
“I’d hooked a huge catfish a week or so before that day, so we anchored nearby in a 30-foot-deep hole to soak a cut skipjack bait,” Thompson tells Wired2fish. “We were fishing about 10 minutes when something took the bait on a 9/0 circle hook.
“I was going to hand off the rod to my son George Jr., and let him catch it cause he’s a good little angler. But then the fish started to take off. Not fast, but super strong, and it just kept going, and going, and going. I knew my son couldn’t handle that fish. So, I stayed on the rod and a 30-minute grueling fish fight began.”
The deep fighting blue catfish plowed along in the murky Missouri River for nearly two miles, said Thompson, who runs Missouri River Catfish Guides out of his Omaha residence. The fish ran from riverbank to riverbank, back and forth between Iowa and Nebraska near the town of Council Bluffs.
Thompson had to follow the fish in his SeaArk 240 boat. He ran his Suzuki outboard while fighting the fish with a rugged rod rigged with 60-pound Power Pro braided line and a 80-pound-test monofilament leader.
“I didn’t know if I could really boat him,” said Thompson. “I’ve caught 100-pound catfish before, but nothing like that one. It was the strongest fish I ever fought. I just couldn’t stop him, and he was headed for wing dams and holes for more than a mile.”
Finally, the deep, heavyweight catfish began to tire a half-hour into the battle on the Iowa side of the river. Thompson netted the fish, wrestled it into his boat, and immediately knew it was over 100 pounds, and perhaps an Iowa record blue cat.
Thompson put the fish in an aerated livewell and phoned his buddy Joel Rybin who owns Anchor Inn Bait & Tackle. Rybin brought a scale to the boat ramp where George had launched his SeaArk earlier in the day. They weighed the fish quickly, and knew it likely was an Iowa record blue cat.
But they had to get it weighed on certified scales. They kept the fish alive in the boatwell in highly oxygenated water and drove with their boat and catfish to Rustic Cuts Butcher Shop in Council Bluffs where they had a certified scale.
A state DNR staffer met them at the butcher shop, where the fish officially weighed 105 pounds, with a 60-inch length and 39-inch girth. It was estimated to be about 20 years old. It easily topped the previous record weight Iowa blue cat of 101 pounds, caught by angler Mike Rush in 2004 from that same area of the Missouri River.
Once the fish was weighed and measured Thompson drove his boat with his frisky catfish in its livewell back to the Missouri boat ramp and released it. A video of him releasing the fish shows George and his father George Sr. letting the big cat go.
Thompson’s 105-pound fish has been accepted by Iowa as the new state record blue cat. And Thompson thinks there may be even bigger ones prowling the Missouri River.
“My 105-pound blue cat was longer than the world record of 143 pounds out of Virginia,” said Thompson, who’s considering having a replica mount made of his Iowa record catch. “I really think that at times there may be a world-record blue cat swimming in the river. You just never know.”
