Three generations of anglers were on the Ohio River near the West Virginia town of Ravenswood as it was getting dark on Friday.
Tyler Harmon, his 4-year-old son, Walker, and his father, Rodney, had launched their 18-foot aluminum boat and ran to a slow-current area. They and put out four catfish rods baited with cut creek chub minnows.
“We hadn’t been fishing very long before when one of our rods bowed, I picked it up, and I knew it was a big catfish,” Tyler tells Outdoor Life. “We were just trying to get a small catfish for my 4-year-old son to fight when a huge one took our bait.”
Tyler fought the fish for about 20 minutes from his anchored boat. The 28-year-old technician for a titanium company struggled to keep his 40-pound test line from tangling in submerged brush and from the boat anchor line.
“I finally got it close to our boat, and Walker was flipping out because he thought it was a big shark,” said Tyler with a chuckle. “My dad netted it, and I helped him swing it aboard.
‘We sat there looking at it for a few seconds, and I realized that it might be big enough for a state record.”
They weighed it on a scale they had in the boat, and knew they had to get it weighed on certified scales.
They headed back to the ramp and loaded the huge catfish into a livestock tub in a pickup truck. Then Tyler called his friend Seth Rhodes, who owns the nearby D&D Bait Shop.
“We went to the bait shop, and we put the big cat in a large aerated bait tank he has there,” Tyler explained. “It was about midnight, and we knew we couldn’t report it to the state fisheries folks until the next morning.”
The next day, Saturday, they contacted state officials, and about noon West Virginia fisheries biologist Ryan Bosserman arrived at D&D Bait Shop. He confirmed Tyler’s fish weighed 72.75 pounds, with a 48.15-inch length and a 33.5-inch girth.
It was then certified as West Virginia’s new catch-and-release blue catfish record, as it topped the 71-pounder caught by Michael Ramey in May. Ramey’s cat, which still remains listed on the state agency’s website, also was caught from the Ohio River near Ravenswood.
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“The tackle shop is right near the Ohio River, so after it was weighed on certified scales I released it near where it was caught,” Tyler said. “I may have a replica mount made of the fish – which my son, Walker, now knows was not a shark.”
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