At 10 p.m. on June 6, Michael Padgett, 28, was anchored over a bottom hump on Belton Lake, soaking cut gizzard shad baits for catfish. His wife, Jordan, was fishing with him, along with friends Ashley Beaman and Garett Trammell.
The group was fishing from Padgett’s ProCat 240 on the 12,400-acre Central Texas reservoir when one of their heavy rods doubled over and Michael grabbed it. The Temple, Texas, native, who works in pest control, set the hook using stout 85-pound-test braided line.
“I knew it was a pretty good fish,” Michael told Wired2fish. “But I didn’t realize how big it was until we got it close to the boat for Garett to net. Once he lifted it aboard, we were amazed.”
The anglers didn’t have a scale in the boat, so Michael placed the blue catfish in the boat’s 80-gallon livewell and headed back to the launch ramp. They called friends in hopes of finding a scale capable of weighing such a large catfish.
The fish weighed 75.02 pounds on a non-certified scale, and Michael initially planned to release it. He didn’t want to kill the fish just to have it officially weighed.
However, Texas maintains a catch-and-release lake records program, so Michael was advised to measure the blue catfish instead. He took the fish to his home near Belton Lake, where he placed it in a 300-gallon tank overnight to keep it alive until it could be properly measured the next morning.
The catfish officially measured 50 inches long with a 33-inch girth. That easily surpassed the current Belton Lake catch-and-release blue catfish record of 47.5 inches, set four years earlier by Randy Bane.
Michael has submitted all required paperwork and photos to the state, and after officials review the documentation, his fish is expected to become the new Belton Lake catch-and-release blue catfish record.
Although the fish weighed 75.02 pounds on a non-certified scale, it cannot officially challenge the existing Belton Lake weight record of 68.05 pounds, caught in July 2023 by angler William Massey, who was also using cut shad bait.
Still, Michael’s fish likely exceeded Massey’s record weight. Releasing it, however, meant avoiding the stress and potential mortality associated with transporting it to a certified scale.
“The catfish weighed 75 pounds on non-certified scales, but I wanted to release it rather than kill it for a weight record, so we went after the Belton Lake length record instead,” he said. “I’m more than happy with that because the fish is still alive, healthy, and back in Belton Lake to spawn and produce more catfish.
“I’m talking with a taxidermist now about having a replica mount made of the fish so I can hang it in my home alongside some of my deer mounts.”
