The Schuylkill River that runs through Philadelphia might not be the prettiest (or the cleanest) stream on the East Coast, but it kicked out one of the biggest flathead catfish ever seen in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
Local fisherman Daniel Brown caught the huge flathead just blocks from where he lives in South Philly, and he says it would have broken the state record had he gotten it weighed on a certified scale and verified by officials. Instead, he released the 70-plus-pound catfish back into the river and settled for a new personal best.
“For me to get that fish and find somebody to let me weigh that on a scale, I could have went to a scrapyard,” Brown told GoErie News about his decision. “It would have been torture on that fish and it would have been a lot of work for us.”
Brown did not respond immediately to a request for comment from Outdoor Life Wednesday. But judging by the photos he shared to Facebook Sunday, his fish could very well have been a state-record contender. According to Brown’s hand scale, it weighed 72.5 pounds, which is around 6 pounds heavier than the standing state-record flathead that was certified in June 2023.
Brown told GoErie that he and his father-in-law, John, fish the spot where he caught the giant flathead every weekend. (Brown’s Facebook profile is full of fish pictures that appear to be taken from that same spot.)
Because of their honey hole’s proximity to the new pedestrian bridge, the two anglers often have an audience. They did Sunday, after Brown caught the giant flathead on his first cast of the morning. He was using a Storm Swim Shad soft-plastic lure, and because of where they were standing on the bridge, the two anglers had to use a drop net to hoist the fish up to their level. A Reddit post made that afternoon includes pictures of John kneeling on the bridge and holding Brown’s giant flathead on a stringer.
“Guy said it was a state record fish at 72 pounds,” the Reddit post reads. “He was awaiting the PFBC to confirm the weight before releasing.”
It’s unclear, though, if the two anglers actually contacted the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, which maintains the state’s fishing records and has specific rules for how to certify a record. As in most other states, the fish has to be weighed on a certified scale before it can even be considered as a potential new record in Pennsylvania. Although it’s not required for anglers to kill a fish to have it certified — some are able to safely release their record fish after weighing them properly — they can die during the process, which leads some anglers to skip pursing a record altogether.
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In speaking with GoErie, Brown said he and John knew they had a potential state-record after weighing the fish on the hand scale. But since it was early Sunday morning, Brown said he wasn’t sure who to contact at PFBC. He said nobody from the agency came out to the spot, and that after keeping the 50-inch catfish on the stringer for a while, they ultimately decided to let it go.
PFBC communications director Mike Parker tells OL that the agency did not receive a record application for Brown’s catfish. He says it’s not unusual for anglers to release these so-called “unofficial” state records without taking steps to certify their fish with the agency. It wasn’t a matter of PFBC officers “not getting there in time” to verify Brown’s fish, as they could have verified the catch and the species through photos after it was weighed properly and released.
“I tell people who are trying to catch potential state records that they need to have plan, and the number one thing they have to do is get it weighed on a certified scale,” Parker says. “If it was as easy as weighing [a fish] on a hand scale and posting about it on Facebook, we’d have a new state record every week.”
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