Canadian outdoors TV show host lands huge fish at Lake Moultrie
Guide Darryl Smith of Rock Hill has bigger catfish in his boat before, but probably none that will be seen by as many people as the one he looked at this past Tuesday.
Smith was playing host to Kathryn Maroun, host of a popular Canadian outdoors television show, “What a Catch!” on a trip on Lake Moultrie for blue catfish. At about 1 p.m., Jerry Glenn, a fisheries biologist from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources’ Bonneau depot, pulled up to see how he was doing.
“Kathryn had interviewed him the night before to get more background on the blue catfish, and he drove up to us and grabbed hold of the side of my boat and said he wanted to see a rod bend,” Smith said. “Right before he pulled up, we’d put a 35-pounder in the boat.”
Moments later, one of Smith’s rods bent over abruptly, and 25 minutes later, Maroun put a 96.4-pound blue catfish in the boat.
“The biggest I’ve ever had in my boat was 100.5 pounds,” Smith said. “And this was the fourth monster catfish I’ve hooked fishing with somebody who was doing a TV show, but the only one we put in the boat. I think it could possibly be the biggest catfish ever caught in the U.S. that’s on film.”
The big blue was 54 inches long and measured 41 inches in girth. It came out of 29 feet of water and hit a piece of cut shad. The fish was caught on a Shakespeare Ugly Stick Tiger rod, a Pfleuger Trion 66 reel and 30-pound test Yo-Zuri hybrid line.
The huge fish wasn’t exactly a surprise to Smith.
“We’ve caught more fish between 40 and 60 pounds in the last month than I did in all of this year and last year combined,” he said.
Smith learned the next day that Maroun’s fish was a world record, breaking the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame’s record for catch-and-release blue catfish.
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