Michael Ramey was fishing a local catfish club tournament on the Ohio River the morning of May 9. He was with friends Tyler McCoy and Mark Taylor while fishing near the town of Ravenswood.
“We’d fished one spot that morning and caught nothing,” Ramey tells Wired2fish. “Then we moved about 8:30 a.m. to a second place on a deep 45-foot hole with a river current break. We’d just got anchored, baited hooks, and put all our lines out when a rod bent double and I grabbed it.”
No hook set was needed as a big, deep catfish ate a cut white bass bait, and a 10/0 circle hook drove into the fish’s jaw corner.
“The river there is full of snags and big rocks, and I had to beat the fish fast to get it up and to my boat,” said the 37-year-old heavy equipment operator from Poca, West Virginia. “The fish tangled my line in another rod line we had out. But I got it up and Tyler netted it.”
But their big net broke while bringing the huge blue catfish aboard Ramey’s G3 Sportsman 2100 aluminum boat.
He used a rugged 7.5-foot carbon fiber rod, Penn revolving spool reel filled with 100-pound test braided line and an 80-pound mono leader. A catfish rig with a 3-way swivel, with a 12-ounce sinker on a dropper line was needed to hold bait on bottom in the heavy and deep Ohio River current.
Confirmed By The State
The anglers thought Ramey’s catfish might be a state record and weighed it on a scale they had in their boat. It showed the fish was 71 pounds; big enough to top the previous record 69.45-pound Ohio River blue cat caught in 2023 by Michael Drake.
“I wanted to be sure my scale was right about that catfish, so I phoned my pal Todd Anderson, who was fishing nearby in the same tourney we were,” Ramey explained. “He ran over and weighed my catfish on his scale. It showed it at 71 pounds, too.”
The anglers put the big cat in Ramey’s large boat livewell and contacted the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (DNR). A pair of DNR fisheries biologists were sent to meet Ramey with his catfish at the Ravenswood boat ramp on the Ohio River.
There biologists Nate Taylor and Drew Carter weighed the 50.23-inch fish on certified scales at 71 pounds. The state has now officially recognized Ramey’s blue cat as the heaviest ever caught in West Virginia.
After the biologists weighed Ramey’s record catfish the anglers went back to fishing the river for their local Ohio Hills Catfish Tournament. The 3 p.m. weigh-in also was at the Ravenswood boat ramp.
Ramey’s big cat won for largest fish weighed in the event, scoring $500 for the anglers.
After weighing his fish in the tourney, Ramey released it at the boat ramp.
“We didn’t catch another fish besides that big one, and another team had more weight and won first place,” Ramey said lightheartedly. “But catching a state record cat made it a day I’ll always remember.”
