“I told my kid I just wanted to get it close to the boat so I could see it,” he said, thinking it was a big northern pike or walleye.

When Smith finally got the fish up close to the boat, netting it proved difficult. The fish was so heavy that with only half of it in the net the handle started to bend. So the two anglers reached down and grabbed onto the net itself to hoist the beastly catfish into the boat.

Hefty cat

With a 28-pound scale in the boat Smith found that the fish buried that device before he even got the fish lifted all the way up. Excited, he called friends who told him to get it weighed on a registered scale in case it was a record. Not knowing where to go, he phoned the Forsyth Fish, Wildlife & Parks warden who drove out to personally oversee the weigh-in. In the meantime, Smith kept the fish alive in a cooler.

The local hardware store had a certified scale that proved the fish was a new record. Smith later drove the cat to Miles City so fisheries manager Mike Backes could verify the species. Backes told Smith the last time Castle Rock Lake had been stocked with catfish was in 1982 and 2001, so the fish could be between 18 and 37 years old.

"It seems a little fast to get that big in 18 years," Backes said.