A fisherman in North Carolina waited several hours throughout the night and into the early morning hours before getting an official weight on the blue catfish he caught in the Roanoke River on Saturday night, but it was well worth the wait.
Rocky Baker’s catch wound up weighing 127.1 pounds and was certified as a North Carolina record, surpassing the previous state record by more than five pounds.
The old record weighed 121 pounds, 9 ounces and was caught on cut bait by Joey Baird from Lake Gaston on July 5, 2020.
As reported by Field and Stream and CatfishNow, Baker was fishing with Justin Ryan Clifton and had already caught catfish weighing 51, 40 and 30 pounds before the sun set. Then, around 9:30 p.m., the big bite came on a 3-inch gizzard shad.
“Once we hooked the fish, we could tell instantly that it was going to be a great fish,” Baker told CatfishNow. “I was thinking 80-pounds plus. The fish fought for a solid 20 to 30 minutes. It crossed the river back and forth several times before it got close enough to see. At that point, we were kinda freaking out. It looked like a baby whale.”
Once they pulled it into the boat, they attempted to weigh it, but the 110-pound scale bottomed out before the fish could even be lifted off the deck.
Also on FTW Outdoors: World-record brown trout caught from canal, a known buffet for fish
They immediately headed for the dock where they tied the fish off to keep it in the water. Then they starting making calls for help.
One friend brought a weigh-sling that gave them weights between 130 to 140 pounds.
“When we saw that weight, we were freaking out,” Baker told CatfishNow. “Those are world-class numbers. So we decided to take the fish to EZ Bait and Tackle in Goldsboro where they have a certified scale and a big aerated tank. It was a 1½-hour trip.”
They got to the tackle shop at 1:15 a.m. and placed the fish into the outdoor bait tank. They managed to contact shop owner Dewayne Bevil and state biologist Ben Ricks.
“Bevil arrived about 4 to 4:30 a.m.” Baker told CatfishNow. “He had talked to Ben Ricks and was to confirm our catch before Ricks made the drive of more than an hour to Goldsboro.”
Bevil confirmed to Ricks it was a monster catfish and that he should come to verify the catch, and he did.
“So we nursed the fish till about 5:30 a.m.,” Baker said. “The biologist arrived and proceeded with weighing and measuring the blue. When complete, he confirmed it was a new state record at 127.1 pounds.”
They returned the blue catfish to the dock and released it back into the Roanoke River.
“It was like a dream come true for most serious catfisherman,” Baker told WRAL.
