Rock Hill teen, with uncle’s help, reels in massive 90+ pound fish from SC lake
Destin Fox and his uncle Ryan Williams from Rock Hill went fishing Saturday at Lake Wateree between Great Falls and Columbia, and they came back with a fish they’ll remember forever.
Destin, a 15-year-old Rock Hill High School student, wasn’t on the water half an hour before he hooked, then landed, a whopper of a blue catfish that weighed 94 pounds.
“Huge!” Destin said in a Tuesday phone interview. “It was fun.”
Destin was low-key about the fish, but the adults in his family are still buzzing over the biggest catfish they’ve ever seen. The fish was 56 and 1/2 inches long and its girth measure around the widest point was 37 inches.
“The mack daddy of catfish,” said Destin’s uncle Ryan Williams, who was on the boat. “Destin caught it. We are both still in shock how big it was.”
It took Destin, with his uncle right with him, about 30 minutes to pull the fish into the boat. It was so big they cast aside a too-small net to pull it in with just strength and determination.
It’s no tall tale. The team took the fish back to Sutton’s Landing campground and bait store near Winnsboro. They took photos, including one of a scale with the 94-pound weight.
Mike Fox, Destin’s father, said he was proud of his son’s big catch.
“I’ve been fishing 40 years and never seen any blue cat near as big,” said another uncle, Anthony Williams.
Catfish records broken?
This fishing family believes in what fishermen call CPR: catch, photograph, release. The fish was kept alive in an oxygenated tank at Sutton’s Landing before it was released back into the lake.
“This was the biggest blue catfish we ever saw here,” said Sutton’s Landing owner Chris Sutton. “Just massive. Huge.”
It remains unclear if the blue catfish is the largest ever taken in the immediate area of the Catawba River basin. The river basin runs south from Lake Hickory to Lake Norman in North Carolina then Lake Wylie before hitting Lake Wateree.
The S.C. Department of Natural Resources does not keep records for specific bodies of water such as the Catawba River basin and its lakes, but only for the state as a whole, said Stephen Fastenau, a DNR spokesman. The South Carolina state record for a blue catfish is 113.8 pounds, Fastenau said.
The North Carolina record for a blue catfish is even larger — 127 pounds.
Importantly, this may not be the last massive catfish the family reels in. They are part of the Southeastern Catfish Club and compete in tournaments and more along the river in York and Chester counties and beyond.
This story was originally published January 2, 2024 at 5:20 PM.
