Fifteen-year-old Destin Fox was fishing with family over the weekend on South Carolina’s Lake Wateree when he hauled in one of the biggest blue catfish ever recorded in the region. According to a Facebook post from local bait and tackle shop Sutton’s Landing, Fox’s catfish weighed 94 pounds. And the young angler later told the Rock Hill Herald that it taped out at a whopping 56 1/2 inches with a 37-inch girth.
“I’ve been fishing 40 years and never seen any blue cat near as big,” Fox’s uncle, Anthony Williams, told The Herald. Chris Sutton, owner of the Sutton’s Landing bait shop, echoed Williams’ sentiments. “This was the biggest blue catfish we ever saw here,” he told the outlet. “Just massive. Huge.”
The battle lasted a full 30 minutes before Fox managed to bring the giant fish boatside. When it finally boiled at the surface, he realized that his net was too small to contain what he’d caught.
Fox pulled the 94-pounder aboard with help from his uncles and his father. Then they drove it to Suttons in the nearby town of Winsboro, South Carolina to get its official weight and measurements. The fish was kept alive inside an oxygenated live well before Fox released it at a landing next to the shop.
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Photos show Fox and family hoisting the giant fish, and one shows it lying on the ground, dwarfing a large dip net. It’s unclear if Fox’s blue cat is the largest ever taken from Lake Wateree or the broader Catawba River Basin, which flows through North and South Carolina—but it’s certainly turning a lot of heads. The largest blue catfish ever recorded in South Carolina weighed 113.8 pounds, while North Carolina’s blue cat record stands at 127 pounds.
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