A 16-year-old Washington state angler spent one of his final days of summer vacation reeling in his first-ever catfish: a 37.7-pound whopper that breaks a longstanding state record.
Cole Abshere, an incoming sophomore at Blaine High School, was fishing with his grandfather at Lake Terrell on Tuesday and had made his last cast of the afternoon when the giant whiskerfish struck.
After a 45-minute fight, Cole was posing with a fish that will likely strike from the record list a 36.2-pound channel catfish caught from a roadside pond in 1999. (The record approval process can take days or weeks.)
“He was shocked and thrilled that his first catfish was that big, let alone a state record,” Angela Morin Abshere, Cole’s mother, told For The Win Outdoors.
According to My Ferndale News, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife assisted in getting the fish weighed on a certified scale. The official measurement was 42 inches long.
Cole and his grandfather, Joe Morin, had previously caught only a single trout while fishing from the pier at Terrell Lake.
Cole’s mother said that head and spine of the catfish were donated to the WDFW for education and scientific research, while Cole and his grandfather brought home about 25 pounds of meat processed into steaks by a nearby fish market.
–Images showing Cole Abshere with his catfish are courtesy of Angela Morin Abshere
