Danny Mayer was about to call it a night when he cast his fishing line into the Kansas side of the Missouri River about 9:30 p.m. on May 15, north of Kansas City, Kansas.
Instead, Mayer hooked and reeled in a massive 121.1-pound blue catfish, obliterating the previous Kansas state record of 102.8 pounds for that type of fish.
“What I thought was the end of the night was just the beginning,” Mayer told The Capital-Journal on July 15.
Fisherman: Officials determined record fish was 23 years old
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks recently updated its website to reflect that Mayer caught the record blue catfish using common carp as bait. The fish was 59.75 inches long, that site said.
The state’s previous record blue catfish had been taken from the Missouri River by Robert Stanley of Olathe on Aug. 11, 2012. That fish had been 56.75 inches long, the KDWP website said.
It was a lucky deal that I was on the Kansas side,” said Mayer, 44, acknowledging the fish wouldn’t have set a record if he had caught it in Missouri.
The record blue catfish for Missouri weighed exactly 130 pounds and was taken from the Missouri River by Greg Bernal of Florrisant, Missouri, on July 20, 2010, according to records posted online.
The catfish Mayer caught was female and was determined by KDWP to be 23 years old, Mayer said.
That made her a very old catfish, he said.
Blue catfish have an average life expectancy of nine to 10 years, and have been known to live as long as 25 years, said the website of the American Catfishing Association.
Mayer had recently helped bring in a 99-pound catfish
Mayer, an experienced tournament angler, said he fishes regularly on the Missouri River to the north and south of St. Joseph, Missouri. He lives at Agency, Missouri, near St. Joseph.
About three weeks before catching the record catfish, Mayer said, he helped a buddy bring a 99-pound catfish he’d caught into Mayer’s boat, with that fish falling roughly 2 pounds short of breaking a Nebraska state record.
“It was a good three weeks of fishing, having those two giants in the boat,” Mayer said.
Fisherman: Bringing record fish into his boat was a struggle
Getting the 99-pounder into Mayer’s boat hadn’t been a struggle — but getting the record catfish into his boat was, he said.
Mayer caught the record fish using a Big Cat Fever rod while pre-fishing alone to prepare for a tournament.
He said he caught the record fish while fishing from the last spot at which he was going to fish that day, after having caught several other fish while being out all day.
When he hooked the record fish, Mayer said, “I could tell immediately that it was the biggest fish that I had hooked that day.”
Mayer estimated he fought the fish for 10 or 15 minutes.
