Record catfish will swim on in video

Fisherman to offer DVD for sale of fish in captivity

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK
Belleville News Democrat

What does a champion blue catfish angler who lands a world-record fish do for an encore? He makes a video.

Tim Pruitt, 33, a factory worker and longtime catfish expert from Alton, Ill. said, he will offer a DVD showing unpublished footage of his world-record-setting, 124-pound blue catfish.

While the video will not show his 40-minute battle with the piscine monster in the early morning darkness Sunday on the Mississippi River near Alton, it will show the great catfish in captivity.

Actually, Pruitt said he wished he had immediately returned the fish directly to the Mississippi where he has returned other big cats, including a 95-pounder he said he caught last year that would have beaten the existing Illinois state record.

"I'm a firm believer in catch and release," he said, adding he was saddened when the world record catfish died while enroute to an aquarium in Kansas.

But unlike last year when Pruitt still was returning catfish after weighing them while on the water, he said he had equipped his 19-foot fishing boat Sunday with an oxygenated live well. He carefully slid the 124-pound fish, caught on a hook baited with a strip of herring, into the live well and brought it ashore. Then he and wife Carla and friend, Tom Pfiefer, headed for shore.

There, according to state fish biologist Fred Cronin, the catfish was weighed and witnessed by game wardens who confirmed its world-record weight.

It was 58 inches long, 44 inches around and was estimated to be 30 years old.

However, on the way to a Cabela's Outfitter store in a truck equipped with a live well, the fish died. Cronin, the biologist, said the huge fish may have been injured through handling (because of its weight), damaged internal organs.

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