North Texas man's huge catch not an official record because he released it

Johnny D. Anderson caught a record blue catfish, weighing 63.5 pounds and measuring 4 feet and 5 inches, during a typical fishing day at a pier off Lake Pat Cleburne in Cleburne, about 30 miles south of Fort Worth. less Johnny D. Anderson caught a record blue catfish, weighing 63.5 pounds and measuring 4 feet and 5 inches, during a typical fishing day at a pier off Lake Pat Cleburne in Cleburne, about 30 miles south of Fort ... more Photo: Courtesy/Cleburne Times-Review Photo: Courtesy/Cleburne Times-Review Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close North Texas man's huge catch not an official record because he released it 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

A Cleburne man reeled in a blue catfish at a North Texas lake that more than doubled the size of the lake’s record.

Johnny D. Anderson caught the blue catfish, weighing 63.5 pounds and measuring 4 feet and 5 inches, while fishing at a pier off Lake Pat Cleburne, about 30 miles south of Fort Worth.

“I fought with that fish for a long time,” Anderson, a retired Air Force veteran, told the Cleburne Times-Review. “It pulled the line to the end of the reel all the way out about two times. It was a lot of fun.”

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He told the newspaper that he was fishing with a 20-pound test line and wrestled with the fish for about 45 minutes. He added that he called his wife to bring a camera for proof, and then he released it back into the lake.

“When they get over 10 or 12 pounds I release them,” Anderson told the newspaper. “I figure if they survive to get that big, in my opinion, they deserve to live.”

Friday’s catch disrupted an 18-year-old record for Lake Pat Cleburne that was made by Gary Barger, who caught a 30-pounder by a jug line. But, because Anderson released the fish before registering it, his catch will not go into the record books, a Texas Parks and Wildlife official told the newspaper.

Anderson said he did not want to register the catfish because he would’ve had to take it to an office across the lake.

“It would have taken me a long time to get to the other side of the lake,” Anderson said. “And I didn’t want the fish to be out of the water for that long.”

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The biggest blue catfish caught in Texas weighed 121.5 pounds and measured 58 inches, and was caught in Lake Texoma in Jan. 16, 2004. Research shows that the fish was 23 years old.

The world record for blue catfish was a 143-pounder caught in 2011 by Richard Anderson in Kerr Lake in Virginia, according to the International Game and Fish Association.

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