Home to numerous lakes and rivers including Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River, when it comes to catching really big freshwater fish, Illinois has recorded some monster catches. So big, in fact, that for a while, an Illinois man held the national catfish record.
The record-setting catfish was caught by Tim Pruitt in the Mississippi River along Alton, Illinois, on May 21, 2005, and weighed a whopping 124 pounds, 4 ounces. It measured 58 inches in length and 44 inches in girth.
According to Catfish Edge, Pruitt "was a catch-and-release trophy catfish angler, who considered letting his world record swim free after weighing on a certified scale." In the end, however, he agreed to let the fish be displayed at a Kansas City Cabela's store, but the giant catfish died in transit.
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Pruitt's record was broken five years later on the Missouri River when Greg Bernal caught a 130-pound fish, and then again in 2011 when the current record-holding catfish was hooked in Virginia, weighing in at 143 pounds.
When it comes to hooking the largest fish ever caught in Illinois, Lake Michigan also delivers a lot of species records including: Atlantic salmon (18 pounds, 11.25 ounces), brook trout (7 pounds, 5 ounces), brown trout (26 pounds, 11.5 ounces), Chinook salmon (37 pounds), Coho salmon (20 pounds, 9 ounces), and rainbow trout (31 pounds, 6.72 ounces), among others.
Other species records were set in less famous bodies of water. For instance, Joe Grega hooked the largest yellow perch ever caught in Illinois on Jan. 5, 1974, on what is now Braidwood Lake. The fish measured 16.25 inches and weighed in at 2 pounds, 8.75 ounces when caught. Grega
told the Chicago Sun Times he was surprised his record has stood for more than a quarter century. "I am surprised it has stood this long. I keep thinking it is going to be broken," Grega said.
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