Craig Hollandsworth of Cowen and his wife love to fish
"We went out one morning doing some bass fishing and I hooked into this fish and it rolled up on its side and I thought I had a walleye," Hollandsworth said. "It put up a pretty good fight and it came to the top of the water and my wife netted it and it was a huge perch."
It was huge indeed. The perch stretched the tape measure 15 and a half inches when Craig first landed it. However, it took two days before the DNR could put the official tape measure to the fish after it shrank a bit, but still measured long enough to establish a new state record at 15.44 inches, besting the old record caught in an Upshur County farm pond in 2008 by Joshua Carr.
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Record Yelow Perch caught by Craig Hollandsworth at Summersville Lake |
Craig’s fish weighed 1.20 pounds, falling short of the standing record of 1.85 caught at
"I have caught some pretty good ones," said Hollandsworth who regularly fishes at
Hollandsworth dropped the fish into his live well on that Sunday morning and continued fishing. He reports the day held good fishing for smallmouth as well. Later in the day, he had a tough time contacting anybody with the DNR since it was the weekend. However, eventually biologist from
"I kept it alive in the live well and after the DNR Biologist got there and measured it, I released it," said Craig. "I didn’t want to kill it, I wanted to release it."
So the state record yellow perch was caught from and still swims the waters of
"I told everybody I sewed his mouth shut before I put it back in," he laughed.