Iowa Outdoorsman Reels in MONSTER Fish [PHOTOS]

There are plenty of great fishing spots in the state of Iowa -- Okoboji, the Mississippi River, and farm ponds galore make it a nice second option to the Land of 10,000 Lakes just north of us.

The folks at Outdoor X Media know it -- and they show off their catches on their Facebook page, YouTube, and Instagram. They take advantage of not only the fishing opportunities but the hunting, too.

Here's what they say about themselves on their Facebook About page:

"We spend our summers running the river chasing catfish and our falls chasing deer... And everything else in between. Thank you for following and supporting our team."

And boy, did they find success so far this summer chasing those catfish. As one of the members of Outdoor X Media, Greg Sieck shared with KCCI that he caught the flathead catfish of his life over the weekend in Des Moines.

Say hello to this 71-pound beast that Sieck reeled in:

Sieck told KCCI's Erin Hanson that the crew took pictures and some videos and released the monster cat back into the water.

Sieck and the Outdoor X Media team missed the state record for flathead catfish by ten pounds. According to LandBigFish.com, the record was set in 1958 by Joe Baze who landed an 81-pound flathead in Lake Ellis, which is located in south-central Iowa.

The world record was caught in the Elk City Reservoir in Kansas in 1998 -- the creature was 123-pounds.

Per the Iowa DNR, "Large flatheads, more than 20 inches long, are almost wholly fish-eating, taking live or dead fish from the bottom," and in Iowa, they live "mainly in mud-bottomed areas and deep waters in pools. The Flathead Catfish also lives in reservoirs but is more plentiful below dams of major impoundments. It is usually found by drift piles, submerged logs, or fallen trees with hard-bottomed substrates of sand or silt."