Justin Hodge with his 73.6-pound Florida state-record blue catfish.
(Credit: MyFWC Florida Fish & Wildlife)
New Florida Blue Cat Record
By Keith “Catfish” Sutton
A giant blue catfish pulled from Florida’s Suwannee River earlier this year has officially rewritten the Sunshine State record book.
Florida angler Justin Hodge boated the massive fish February 21 while fishing the Old Town reach of the Suwannee River in Dixie County. After an intense battle, Hodge wrestled the catfish aboard and quickly realized he might be looking at something special.
The fish officially weighed 73.6 pounds, measured 48.5 inches long and sported an impressive 36.75-inch girth. The catch surpassed Florida’s previous state-record blue catfish, a 69.5-pounder caught from the Choctawhatchee River in 2015.
Hodge later shared photos of the fish online, calling it a potential state record.
“New State Record Blue from a river near you!” he wrote. “Thankful for a great catch.”
Although news of the catch spread quickly after Hodge posted photos in February, the fish was not officially certified as a state record until late spring. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials explained that state-record certification requires several verification steps that can take weeks or even months to complete.
To qualify for a state record, the fish had to be weighed on a certified scale in the presence of an FWC employee, who also recorded official measurements. Afterward, an FWC fisheries biologist inspected the fish to verify the species and confirm all documentation before the application could be finalized and approved.
The morning after the catch, a fisheries biologist confirmed the fish was indeed a blue catfish and estimated its age at an astonishing 55 to 60 years old. FWC finalized the record at the end of February but waited until May to publicly announce the achievement on social media after all the official steps were taken to complete certification.
In an official post, the agency congratulated Hodge for “reeling in the new state-record blue catfish from the Suwannee River.”
Ironically, Hodge had already cleaned and eaten much of the fish before the record became official, though FWC later collected the remains as part of the verification process.
Blue catfish are not native to Florida and were introduced into several river systems decades ago. However, the species has flourished in some waterways, with the Suwannee River now producing fish of exceptional size.
For Hodge, the catch represents the fish of a lifetime and now a permanent place in Florida fishing history.
(Keith Sutton serves as editor of CatfishNOW.from his home in Alexander, Arkansas.)
