9 foot Wels catfish sets new world record

[captain queeg]

6. Years ago when I was going to WSU in E Washington my sister and I drove up the Snake river

Into the lower hells canyon. We saw some guys in a boat that obviously had a big one on. Being new to the area I assumed it was a salmon. They were taking turns fighting it and it started getting dark and cold so we started a fire by shore and sat down to watch. Pretty soon the boat came over and most of the guys got out to get near the fire.

They said it was a sturgeon and they’d been fighting it for 5 hrs. There was one guy still in the beached boat and they said they were ready to cut it loose. Right about that time the fish gave up and we all ran down and they pulled it part way onto shore. They measured it and it was 10 ft long. Not as massive as this catfish but the biggest fish I’d ever seen up close. They pushed it back in the river.

They are kind of like catfish in that they can survive out of water quite awhile and it swam away. When I graduated I went to work for the Corps of Engineers at one of their dams. I got to go down in the draft tube under one of the turbines with the fish biologists and rescued an 8 ft sturgeon. We loaded on a liter like for carry injured people and they hoisted it up several levels and loaded it in a pickup and drove to a nearby park and put it back in the river and it swam away. They get a lot bigger than either of these fish.

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