Catfish weighing 40kg biting American fishermen

A woman who caught a particularly large green catfish on Kentucky Lake, took 10 minutes to wrestle to get on the boat.

Paula Cathey Smith hugged the fish that had been caught in Kentucky Lake.(Photo: TWRA).

Paula Cathey Smith caught green catfish weighing about 40kg in Lake Kentucky, Tennessee, USA, on December 30, according to UPI. Images posted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) on social networks attract more than 1,400 shares and hundreds of comments.

Smith saw the fish biting a green bite after 30 minutes with her husband sailing on the lake. She took about 10 minutes to pull the fish into the boat. She had not measured the length of the fish because she wanted to quickly drop it back into the lake.

This is the largest green catfish Smith ever caught, but it is not enough to set a record. The state record of Tennessee belongs to catfish that weighs nearly 51kg by Robert E. Lewis in 1998.

Green catfish (scientific name Ictalurus furcatus) is one of the largest catfish species in North America, and adults can reach up to 1.6m long and weigh nearly 70kg. They live mainly in the US, Mexico and Guatemala. Green catfish are opportunistic predators with diverse foods such as fish, lobster, freshwater mussels, frogs and many other aquatic organisms.