75-lb. Blue Cat From Carroll County Pond

Big enough to pull you into the lake! Tyler Dodson, 15, lies beside the monster catfish that’s nearly as big as he is. The 49-inch-long catfish, caught Dec. 24, weighed 75 pounds.

On Christmas day evening, Tyler Dodson, 15, of Carrollton was fishing for catfish in a 23-acre lake behind his family’s house. For bait he had mixed chili with jalapenos, sloppy-joe mix, red kidney beans and Primo catfish bait. He poured the concoction into a piece of pantyhose laced with a 5/0 hook. The bait was cast into the lake where it stayed most of the day. At dark Tyler was called to the house, and he released line and walked his spin-cast outfit to the back porch with the baited pantyhose still in the lake. He propped the rod against the rail.

Later in the evening the family heard a thump from the rod being pulled toward the lake. Tyler grabbed the rod — which had been stripped to the spool. In walking toward the lake he was able to recover line and fight the fish — for 30 minutes. Finally he and his brother jumped into the pond to grab the fish and horse it out. The fish weighed 75 pounds on WRD Fisheries scales.

The current state-record blue catfish weighed 67-lbs., 8-ozs. and was pulled from the Chattahoochee River in 2006. Tyler has submitted the information on his fish to the Georgia WRD Fisheries Section for consideration as the new state record blue catfish.