GH man releases possible state record flathead catfish

Fri, Sep 12, 2008    to del.icio.us

If he had it to do all over again, Tom Balavitch might have taken a little more time weighing the monster flathead catfish he and a few other family members landed last weekend.

That's because the huge fish, while thrashing around on Balavitch's scale, registered somewhere between 40 and 50 pounds before he slipped the behemoth beast back into the Grand River.

"It was the biggest fish I've ever caught in my life," Balavitch said. "It's the biggest fish I've ever seen."

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And it could have challenged the state record.

The largest flathead ever caught in Michigan, according to Department of Natural Resources records, is a 47 1/2-pound, 44-inch-long fish caught by Elmer Rayner. That big cat came from the Maple River in Ionia County way back in 1943.

Local catfish guide Dan Lipski, who sees loads of 20-30 pound flatheads every year, looked at a photo of Balavitch's fish and said it was definitely a monster, although he wasn't 100 percent convinced it would threaten the state record.

"That's a pretty good sized flathead," said Lipski, who runs RiverKat charters. "It's not the longest fish I've seen, but it sure seems to have more girth than the 20-30 pound fish I've seen. It's not a very good picture to judge weight from. My best guess would be 30-40 pounds — a very good fish for our state."

Balavitch and a few relatives from the east side of the state were trolling for salmon last Sunday. After catching a few fish on Lake Michigan, they began trolling up the channel. Almost in front of the Coast Guard station, one of their rods doubled over, and Tom Balavitch, standing closest, grabbed the pole, then handed it off to his 14-year-old nephew, John Balavitch. John and his father, Dave, took turns fighting the fish for over 20 minutes while John's grandpa, Tony, looked on.

"For a few minutes, we thought we had the bottom, but it kept hammering," Tom Balavitch said. "We kept circling in the channel while we fought it. We had all the traffic on the boardwalk stopped to watch us."

He was shocked when he saw the huge fish come to the surface. The fish barely fit in Balavitch's large salmon net, and it took two guys to lift the fish onto the boat's swim platform.

Balavitch said they put the fish on his scale, which tops off at 50 pounds, but the big cat refused to hold still, instead thrashing around, making it impossible for them to get an accurate reading.

"We got it on the scale but the fish wouldn't sit still. It was just a big hawg of a fish," Balavitch said.

At the time, keeping the fish never really entered his mind.

"Looking back, I think I'd have brought it in, but it wouldn't have fit in my cooler," he said. "It had such a girth. It was like catching Jobba the Hutt. We didn't want to eat a catfish, and we figure he earned his freedom."

The fish was caught on a black and white polka-dot J-Plug.