Pennsylvania fisherman catches yellow perch that’s comparable to the state record

A phone call from a fishing buddy helped a Pennsylvania angler realize he shouldn’t filet the trophy fish he just caught.

Chuck Main, 55, of Beaver County caught a yellow perch April 7 that rivals the Pennsylvania state record.

Main of Ellwood City was fishing for perch on Presque Isle Bay in Erie when he caught an unusually heavy yellow perch. He’s an avid bass angler and knew people were having success fishing for perch. 

He was on his bass boat with his friend, Mike Hobrat, and they were catching a few perch using a VMC Moon Eye Jig with a Strike King Rage Tail Swimmer. He soon hooked into a large one that got off before he was able to land it.

“My buddy said that’s the largest perch I’ve ever seen,” he said. 

Later on he hooked into another similarly large fish and they safely netted it and put it in his boat’s live well with other fish.

“All of the ones we were catching pretty big, but not mega giants like this one,” he said.

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When he got home he knew the fish was big and decided to put it on his scale before cleaning it. He then realized it topped 3 pounds.

“I don’t know what made me weigh that fish,” he said. “I literally was getting ready to filet him.”

He figured the state record was much heavier than his fish and didn’t look up the state record. He called one of his friends, Austin Dunlap, who wasn’t able to go along that day to tell him about the outing.

“I said you should have went dude, we whacked them,” he said, adding that the one fish was three pounds. The friend told him he probably has the new state record. 

Instead of filleting the fish, they took steps to find a bait shop with an official scale to weigh it. He called the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and he was able to meet Monday with a waterways conservation officer nearby at Reddi Bait in Bridgewater. The official weight turned out to be 3.03 pounds. It was just over 16 inches long and had a girth of 14 inches. Main said the people at the bait shop and the officer were both excited about the size of his catch.

The fish is too close to the state record to be considered as the new title holder. The current record is a yellow perch caught by Kirk Rudzinski of Erie while fishing April 9, 2021, on Lake Erie. His fish weighed 2.98 pounds and the PFBC rounded the weight to 3 pounds.

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Mike Parker, communications director for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, said they can’t comment on a specific fish until they receive a state record application.

“We are aware of the fish and an officer was present to examine the fish,” he said. However, he said, one of the rules on the application form is that the fish must weigh at least two ounces more than the existing record to be considered for a new record.

Parker said the rule for it to weigh at least two ounces more than an existing record is to eliminate any margin of error.  

In addition, he said they don’t list ties or second place in the list of state records. The only way that would happen is if two record fish were caught at the exact same time.

“It’s a stringent process, it’s difficult to achieve and because state records are rare, they mean that much more,” Parker said.

Main said Friday he still plans to file the application with the agency and see what happens. As for the future of the fish, he’s planning to have it mounted by a taxidermist.

“It’s pretty cool. Just the whole story about how I almost filleted it. How everything went down makes it super cool,” Main said. “If it wasn’t for my buddy saying I probably caught the state record, I would not have thought about it for another second.”

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.