Editor’s note: This is an archived article from January 2021. The state record mentioned in this article was broken on July 18, 2021. Click here to read about the latest state record channel catfish.
The previous channel catfish record stood for 50 years
John Stone of Pinehurst, N.C. broke the N.C. state record for channel catfish with a 23-pound, 5-ounce fish. He caught the cat while fishing in a private pond in Moore County. This breaks the old record, set in 1970 by E.J. Bowden of Rocky Mount, who caught his fish in City Lake.
Stone was using cut bait when he hooked into the channel catfish, typically the smallest of the “Big Three” catfish species common throughout the Carolinas. Numerous 20+ pounders were much more common in the Carolinas during the 1950s through 1970s. But it’s rare to see one that weighs close to that these days.
Editor’s note: This is an archived article from January 2021. The state record mentioned in this article was broken on July 18, 2021. Click here to read about the latest state record channel catfish.
South Carolina’s state record channel, which is also the world record, weighed a whopping 58 pounds and was caught by W.H. Whaley out of Lake Moultrie in 1964.
2020 was a big year for N.C. catfish anglers
Stone caught the new record cat in September of last year. But the NCWRC only recently certified it as the new record. This was the third new state record catfish caught by a North Carolina angler in 2020. The blue and flathead catfish records were broken a few months before Stone caught the new channel record.
Last July, Joey Baird of Lawrenceville, Va. caught a blue catfish from the North Carolina side of Lake Gaston that weighed 121-pounds, 9-ounces to set the new blue cat record. Two weeks later, Tyler Barnes of Pikeville, N.C. caught the new state record flathead catfish, a 78-pound, 14-ounce fish out of the Neuse River.
If you’d like to see all of North Carolina’s freshwater state records, click here. For South Carolina’s state records, click here.
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