IT’S not often you see a fly fisher break through the stink-bait and goldfish wall around IGFA catfish world records, but Texas hill country angler Ben Christensen managed the rare feat on a 4wt.
He sightfished the 31-pound blue cat with a damsel fly nymph tied by his son.
Christensen, who is writing a book about fly fishing in the Texas hills, landed the brute on a 4-weight fly rod while using 12-pound test Rio Bass tippet.
Christensen wrote on Instagram. “It was on like Donkey Kong! [The fish] took me into the backing, and I fought him for 40 minutes like we were offshore or something.”
Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries San Marcos/Austin District announced the catch on Facebook as a pending waterbody record for the Pedernales River. It’s also a potential IGFA world-record tippet-class record and appears to top the existing 12-pound tippet-class record, which is a 26-pound, 4-ounce fish that was caught on Florida’s Escambia River in 2018.
Field & Stream: Texas Angler Lands Potential World-Record Catfish On Fly Rod
The Ozark Fly Fisher Journal 