It’s not the type of fish you see flying over the display case at Pike Place Market in Seattle. But a catfish pulled out of the city’s Green Lake over the weekend sure was a noteworthy catch.
According to reports in Northwest Sportsman and The Outdoor Line, Ahmed Majeed, of Kent, Wash., managed to catch what would be a record channel catfish in Washington state. Majeed, who works for Microsoft, said he weighed the fish on a home scale and it read 45 pounds.
More details on that ginormous channel cat caught last weekend!! https://t.co/zkYgBW6uuN
— Northwest Sportsman (@NWSportsman) June 11, 2018
The fish are now gutted and in Majeed’s freezer, so there’s no official weight with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. But 45 pounds would have easily eclipsed a current channel catfish record of 36.20 pounds, recorded in Yakima County by Ross Kincaid in 1999.
Majeed, who came to the U.S. from Iraq in 2008, said he showed up to fish at Green Lake as a challenge.
“Most of the people I know kept saying, ‘No fish in Green Lake,’ or ‘You can’t catch one in there other than trout,'” Majeed told Outdoor Line.
He used a rigging specifically set up to attract large fish, and indeed it worked on something other than the catfish, as Majeed also reeled in a 30-pound carp on Saturday.
According to the WDFW, channel catfish average 16-24 inches in length, while some individuals will live 15-20 years and grow over 30 inches and exceed 30 pounds. Green Lake has been stocked in years past with 11-inch catfish.
“This fish had such a great fight,” Majeed told Northwest Sportsman. “People started gathering from all over the lake to capture pictures and videos.”
