The 98.7-Pound Noodled Catfish -- Largest Ever Caught by Hand and Certified

On June 23, 2023, Justin White and Drew Moore dove 14 feet deep beneath a bridge at Lake Tawakoni, east of Dallas, Texas, and came face-to-face with a monster flathead catfish in the pitch-black water. The fish started ramming them -- a defensive behavior that can break ribs at that size. The two men pinched the catfish between their bodies, got a hand in its mouth, and followed their dive hose back to the surface, disoriented and running on adrenaline. When they got the fish onto a certified scale, it read 98.7 pounds -- making it the largest catfish ever caught by hand noodling and officially verified by weight. While a 106-pound flathead was reportedly noodled in East Texas in 2021, it was released without certified weighing, leaving White and Moore's catch as the documented record. Noodling -- the practice of reaching into underwater holes and catching catfish with bare hands -- is legal in roughly 20 states and requires a specific kind of courage: you cannot see what you are grabbing, and what you are grabbing has several hundred needle-like teeth and can weigh as much as a German Shepherd.