Complaints, objections swept aside as 15-year-old girl claims record for 101-pound catfish

Not everyone seems happy about Jaylynn Parker’s blue catfish record, but when has universal happiness ever been achieved in any doings involving the human race?

Suffice to say that, after displaying a few loose hairs initially judged as made for splitting, the 101.11-pound blue cat taken from the Ohio River on April 17 at New Richmond in Clermont County was attested by the organization that makes such calls as the biggest ever landed in the state.

Replaced last weekend in the all-tackle category of the record book minded by the Outdoor Writers of Ohio was the 96-pound blue cat fished from the Ohio River in 2009 by Chris Rolph of Williamsburg.

How’s this for serendipity? Parker’s fish was weighed on the same scale as Rolph’s.

Outdoors:15-year-old's record catfish could bring change to rules

Here’s more: Rolph’s fish was identified not from personal inspection by a wildlife biologist as stipulated by rule but by photograph, same as the fish landed by the 15-year-old Parker.

That established, a blue catfish doesn’t have many look-alikes, making a photograph fairly compelling evidence.

So was swept away one potential objection, that a fishery biologist didn’t inspect the fish and declare it to be what everyone knew it was. Nor, as the rules specified, did anyone from the five-member Fish Record Committee get a look at the fish before it was released alive.

Someone had raised a doubt about added weights, although three Ohio Division of Wildlife officers sent to examine the legality of the catching probably wouldn’t have missed an attempt at shenanigans.

Two main differences in the catching and handling of the last two record blue catfish figured into the noise about recognition.

Rolph’s fish was taken with a rod and reel, Parker’s on a bank line tied to a float dangling bait. Both methods are legal as long as requirements written into Ohio’s fishing rules are followed, which in both cased they were.

The other departure was that Rolph’s fish ended up dead, while Parker’s is somewhere doing pretty much what it did before it was caught. Parker’s fish’s timeline didn’t include a trip on ice to where it could be checked out.

Good on her.

People demanding a category differentiating fish caught on a bank line from fish caught by rod and reel didn’t get their wish. Still, depending on who’s talking, a few rule tweaks could yet happen.