Well here was the big fish from the weekend for my boat and maybe even the entire state of Nebraska. I caught this 72 lb beast on Saturday afternoon while trolling crankbaits for susspended walleye.
The walleye bite was really hot all day long as was the flathead bite. I watched Todd, a Sherman local, tussle with a dandy cat mid-morning. Todd’s big cat hit the scale at 50+ lbs. Congrats on a PB Todd! 
Aparently a little later in the morning another 25-30 lb’r was boated on fellow IDO faithful, Scott Tincher’s boat. Nice flattie Scott. 
These two cats are also pictured below.
My beast throttled my crankbait mid-afternoon and took me for a ride. I imediately knew I had a big fish on the line and not a snag, as I was trolling for susspended fish in 22 FOW. After a quick drag ajustment I was able to get my kicker into nuetral and reel up my second line to get it out of the way. I generally steer my boat while trolling using my bow mount iPilot. It was a good thing I had the foot pedal out that afternoon as well. This helped me chase down the fish and get directly over top of her to help shorten the fight. I know these big fish are very old and rare and during this time of the year when the water temps are at their warmest it’s best to land them as quickly as possible. Since I was by myself I grabbed my cell phone and made a quick phone call to a friend. Within just a few minutes he had a fellow Nebraska walleye tournament fisherman, that was fishing nearby, on my boat with a giant net to help me get it landed. After netting the beast we removed the crankbait from it’s mouth while it was still in the net over the side of the boat. After getting camera’s and such ready to go we hoisted her into the boat for a couple of quick pics. After holding the fish I knew I wanted to get a weight on her and decided to get to a scale. We placed her back into the landing net and kept her submurged over the side of the boat while we headed to the marina with the kicker motor. I called the marina to let them know I wanted to weigh a fish and asked if they could have someone bring their scale down to my boat. We weighed the fish at 72 lbs, snapped a few more pics and made a successful release. WOW!!! That truely was a fish of a lifetime and I sure hope that someone gets to tussle with her again when she might take down the Nebraska state record of 80 lbs.
Wow – Congrats Ben! 
We did get a fairly acurate measurement of it’s length and it was 55 inches. I would hate to even try to guess the girth. Maybe someone would like to guess. Keep in mind the little guy holding this beast weighs 240. 
