Where to Find the Biggest Catfish in Texas

Feature Story by MATT WILLIAMS

LISTEN: (8 minutes, 4 seconds)

THERE IS MORE than one way to catch a fat cat.

Some anglers like to go after them the conventional way using a stout rod, heavy duty hook and a big slab of cut bait that might tempt a bear. Passive crowds catch plenty on trotlines, jugs, limb lines and bank poles, as do adrenaline junkies like Justin White of Kaufman and Drew Moore of Chandler.

White and Moore are hardcore noodlers who get a charge out of sticking their appendages in dark places where the sun don’t shine. They routinely get their fix snatching big catfish from their spawning dens at Lake Tawakoni, a 38,000-acre reservoir near Greenville that ranks among the top lakes in the south for catching whopper blue, flathead and channel catfish.

Last June, the young men tag-teamed what may be the biggest flathead catch ever noodled and documented on certified scales. They found the 98.7 pound, 56 inch bruiser hiding inside an old concrete washout at the base of a bridge crossing in about 14 feet of water. Moore described the battle as intense. “All hell broke loose,” he said. “She met us at the edge of her spawning bed and went to work on us. She would ram us, suck our arms in up to the elbow, roll, shake loose and bite again. Imagine being locked in a dark closet with an MMA fighter you can’t see. It was complete chaos. We took a total butt whipping for about 2 minutes. She tore up the arms on our wet suits. I’ve had teeth in my arms like splinters.”

Michael Littlejohn and Noel Ibarra know all about Tawakoni’s famed trophy catfish fishery. Both are full-time fishing guides who have steered their clients to a passel of rod and reel bruisers.

The biggest fish hauled aboard Littlejohn’s rig is the 87.5 pound lake record blue cat reeled in by Jody Jenkins in February 2014. The fish gobbled up a piece of fresh cut bait as Littlejohn made a drift across deep water.

Like Littlejohn, Ibarra has caught and released dozens of blues upwards of 40 pounds over the years. His biggest is an 80 pounder caught in February 2020 by Kansas angler Kenny Quiett.

In March 2019, Ibarra guided 13-year-old Brayden Rogers of Cisco to a 67 pounder. The fish was the junior angler state record and lake record until 12-year-old Cade Childress of Pickton cracked it in March 2021 with another Tawakoni giant. Childress’ 72.4 pounder was caught while fishing with guide James Evans.

If it sounds like Tawakoni is a pretty sweet spot to go hunting for heavyweight catfish, that’s because it is. The same could be said for a number of other Texas lakes.

The big girls may show up in lakes of all sizes, but as a rule whopper cats are most abundant in large, riverine water bodies that afford them plenty of food and solitude for growing old and fat.

Blue cats and flathead cats are the two sub-species most prone to develop serious weight problems in these parts. Females can attain weights in excess of 100 pounds, although it can take them a long time to get there.

Channel cat don’t grow near as large as blues and flatheads. The state rod and reel record channel cat dating way back to 1965 is 36.5 pounds from the Pedernales River. An even bigger one (37.70 pounds) was caught on a jug line at lake Bob Sandlin last October, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife’s water body records. Channels do exceptionally well in large river systems, but also can be found in quite a few reservoirs around the state. Big ones upwards of 10 pounds are most common in water bodies where blue catfish populations are not well established, according to Jake Norman, a TPWD fisheries biologist based in Tyler.

Norman ranks lakes Fork, Pat Mayse and Tyler among the top lakes in the state for catching numbers of channel cats in the 8-10 pound range. “The size of the channel cat in those lakes might surprise you,” Norman said. “The common factor between them is they don’t have large numbers of blue cat. It’s kind of a strange dynamic.”

As heavyweight blue cats go, no one can deny Lake Texoma the title belt for quantities of fish weighing upwards of 50 pounds. The 89,000-acre Texas/Oklahoma border fishery has produced several state record blue cats, including an unrestricted 116 pounder caught on a trotline in April 1985 and a current state rod and reel record of 121.5 pounds caught in 2004 by bank fisherman Cody Mullennex. The Mullennex blue ranked as the IGFA world record for several years but has since been broken.

Toledo Bend Reservoir is another border lake known for its heavyweight blues and flatheads, also known as “ops.” The lake record rod and reel flathead from 1985 is listed at 71 pounds, but I’ve seen much bigger. In the early 1990s, I photographed a giant caught on a jigging spoon and brought to shore by a couple of elderly men. The 92 pounder was weighed on an uncertified scale at Bill’s Landing. Interestingly, one of the men was a heart patient who was recovering from quadruple bypass surgery at the time. The other had been declared legally blind. Trotliner Thomas Allcorn owns the T-Bend all tackle lake record with an 84-pound blue caught in 2007. The lake record blue by rod and reel is 67 pounds.

Lake Palestine is another lake that can’t be left out for catching giants on hook and line. The lake record rod and reel blue cat is 48.20 pounds; flathead, 98.5 pounds. The list of Texas lakes known for producing big bites goes on and on.

Sam Rayburn is certainly worth a mention, as are lakes Palestine, Richland Chambers, Ray Hubbard, Lewisville, Livingston, Cedar Creek, Worth, Eagle Mountain, Ray Roberts, and Grapevine.

Take your pick and hang on tight.

Aging a Cat

So, how old was the 98.7 bruiser Moore and White snatched at Lake Tawakoni? No one knows for certain. The only way to accurately estimate the age of a fish is to examine its otoliths, small bones inside the skull. Fish must be dead to do it.

TPWD fisheries/research biologist David Buckmeier has aged thousands of flathead and blue catfish over the years. He says growth rates are highly variable. Buckmeier has aged five-pound flatheads that were 3-30 years old and 100-pound blue cats as young as 13. The biologist has found that the biggest fish are typically not the oldest, and that they usually grow faster than most in the population. His best guess is the Tawakoni fish was likely in its late teens or early 20s.

Texas Catfish Records

Sam Rayburn

• Blue Cat: 53.00 pounds

• Flathead: 74.09 pounds

Palestine

• Blue Cat: 48.20 pounds

• Flathead: 98.50 pounds

Richland Chambers

• Blue Cat: 65.80 pounds

• Flathead: 80.25 pounds

Ray Hubbard

• Blue Cat: 62.23 pounds

• Flathead: 65 pounds

• Channel Cat: 26.06 pounds

Lewisville

• Blue Cat: 63.12 pounds

• Flathead: 98 pounds

• Channel Cat: 22.68 pounds

Livingston

• Blue Cat: 71 pounds

• Flathead: 82 pounds

Cedar Creek

• Blue Cat: 65.01 pounds

• Flathead: 64.75 pounds

Lake Worth

• Blue Cat: 75.50 pounds

• Flathead: 53.65 pounds

Eagle Mountain

• Blue Cat: 53.07 pounds

• Flathead: 73 pounds

Ray Roberts

• Blue Cat: 59.99 pounds

• Flathead: 62.60 pounds

Grapevine

• Blue Cat: 60.80 pounds

• Flathead: 73.50 pounds

 

—story by MATT WILLIAMS

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