Tyler Harmon wasn’t exactly chasing history when he loaded up the boat for a casual evening of fishing with his dad and 4-year-old son.
In fact, his expectations were considerably smaller.
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The Ravenswood, W.Va., angler had gotten the urge to hit the Ohio River late in the day, so he brought his son, Walker, and his father, Rodney, along.
The mission was to find something small enough for Walker to catch himself.
“We were just kind of out there hoping to catch a small catfish for my boy to reel in,” Harmon told Jackson County, West Virginia’s 13 News.
Instead, they ended up with a 72.75-pound monster.
The Harmons set up in a familiar stretch of the Ohio River near Ravenswood, with four catfish rods spread behind their 18-foot aluminum boat. Tyler had previously found submerged trees and brush in the area, and the water was roughly 25 to 30 feet deep.
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They hadn’t been fishing long when things got interesting.
A barge rolled through, its wake pulling the boat’s anchor loose and sending the Harmons drifting. Around that time, one of the rods doubled over.
At first, Rodney thought they were snagged. Then, the line started moving upriver.
“It just started stripping drag,” Tyler said. “I was like, ‘We’re not stuck on anything. That’s a fish.’”
And not a small one.
Tyler spent roughly 20 minutes battling the blue catfish, trying to keep his 40-pound test line away from submerged brush and the boat’s anchor line as the fish repeatedly worked around the front of the boat.
“Whenever it surfaced the first time, my boy saw it and started flipping out thinking it was a shark,” Harmon said.
Close enough.
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Rodney grabbed the landing net, but the catfish was so heavy it bent the aluminum handle. They eventually managed to hoist the fish into the boat together.
Once it hit the deck, Tyler realized this might be more than just the biggest fish of his life.
“I was like, ‘We gotta get this thing weighed,’” he said.
The problem, though, was that it was late on a Friday night.
Tyler began calling around trying to reach the state fisheries personnel needed to certify a record, but nobody was available. So the Harmons shifted into fish-preservation mode.
On the run back to the ramp, they repeatedly dumped buckets of river water over the catfish to keep it alive. Rodney then raced home for a livestock tank, which they filled with river water and equipped with an aerator.
Eventually, Tyler contacted a friend who owns D&D Bait Shop nearby, where the fish could spend the night in a larger tank with a better aeration system.
The next morning, a West Virginia fisheries official arrived with a certified scale.
The numbers were ridiculous: 72.75 pounds, 48.15 inches long and 33.5 inches around.
That was enough to establish a new West Virginia state weight record for blue catfish, surpassing the 71-pound fish Michael Ramey caught from the same Ohio River area in May.
And to make things even sweeter, the catch could also be worth $20,000.
Harmon was using a Hellcat rod made by Catch The Fever, which runs a promotion offering cash awards to anglers who catch qualifying state-record fish with its equipment. The company said it was still reviewing the paperwork and requirements as of Sept. 1, but the fish appeared to qualify for the full payout.
Tyler admitted that’s actually one of the reasons he bought the rod in the first place.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go buy one of these just in case,’” he said, “because you never know.”
If the payout becomes official, Harmon said he plans to use the money toward a down payment on a new house.
The record fish, meanwhile, didn’t end up on anyone’s dinner table or wall. After officials finished weighing and measuring it, Harmon returned the giant blue catfish alive to the Ohio River near where it was caught.
He said he may eventually have a replica mount made.
Tyler is already thinking about that next one, too. His new goal is West Virginia’s flathead catfish record — a mark that has stood for roughly 70 years.
Why not, right?
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