Oregon catfish gives anglers pause — swimmers, too
FISHING -- Eat your chicken livers out, Southern boys. A huge channel catfish caught this month in Oregon's Willamette River proves that we got salmon... and big cats, too.
While fishing with heavy gear at Riverfront Park, Drew Beaty of Salem landed a 3-foot-long channel catfish estimated at 25-30 pounds, according to a story in the Statesman Journal. He doesn't know for sure, because it's just a catfish. He didn't weigh it.
But Gary Galovich, the western Oregon warmwater fish biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office in Corvallis, said Beaty's catfish is remarkable on a number of levels.
"But even more so, being able to catch a channel cat this time of year, I mean the river's up right now, and the river temperatures are pretty cold, too. So it's really surprising that he would be able to catch something like that."
Beaty donated the fish to biologists, who plan to study and age the fish.