For the third time since 2022, the Indiana big-fish record drops

Cedar Lake, Indiana – Not too many months after Indiana broke a big-fish record twice in two weeks, a Hoosier angler now holds the title in a species that is native to Lake Michigan.

On January 6, Anthony Burke, of Cedar Lake, caught a burbot while perch fishing in Lake Michigan. His 14 pounds, 3.6 ounces of freshwater fish measured 37.25 inches in length and weight, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The native of Lake Michigan, the fish may look to some like a hybrid between an eel and a whiskered catfish.

Burke’s catch beat Phillip Duracz’s previous mark by over three pounds. On January 10, 2023, Duracz grabbed an 11.4-pound burbot in Lake Michigan.

Scott Skafar caught a 10.2-pound burbot on December 30, 2022, in Lake Michigan, which smashed Indiana’s record from 1990 by 2.5 pounds. He caught another burbot that day that surpassed the record from 1990 by over two pounds.

“Unseasonably warm weather and light winds on Lake Michigan the last several winters have provided boaters with a longer open-water fishing season and more opportunities to catch fish that are usually not in our waters, like burbot,” stated Ben Dickinson, the state’s fisheries research biologist for Lake Michigan, in a statement.

The majority of burbot’s life is usually spent offshore in the jurisdictional waters of Illinois or Michigan, in deep, cold water. Burbot migrate to shallower waters in Indiana during the late fall and winter to reproduce and feed.

Burbots are tasty foods. The Department of Natural Resources claims that they belong to the cod family and have solid, white flesh.

As reported by The International Game Fish Association, on March 27, 2010, Sean Konrad caught the largest burbot in history, weighing 25 pounds, 2 ounces, in Lake Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan, Canada.