NEWS
RELEASE
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
February 25, 1998
CONTACT: Charlie Mesing (850) 487-1644 or Lt. Stan Kirkland (850) 265-3676
ANGLERS COME CLOSE TO TWO RECORDS
There’s a saying that being close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. For two freshwater anglers, being close meant catching two near-record fish.
On Jan. 27 Matthew Finch, an 8th grader at Vernon Middle School, went fishing with a friend at a small lake near his Washington County home and hooked up with a 5.3-pound, 29-3/4-inch chain pickerel. The 13-year-old middle school student caught the huge chain pickerel, a close relative of the Northern Muskie, while casting a Zebco 33 rod-and-reel and Rat-L-Trap lure.
His fish was only slightly smaller than the Florida record chain pickerel, a 5.75-pound fish caught in Holmes County from Wright’s Creek in June 1995.
The same January week, Richard Wallace, a resident of Martinsville, IN, was fishing from the Jim Woodruff Dam catwalk on the Apalachicola River at Chattahoochee when he landed a 40-pound striped bass after a one-hour battle. The braggin’-sized striper measured 42-inches long and 29-inches in girth.
Wallace’s fish came close to the state record of 42.25-pounds, which also came from the Apalachicola River.
Wallace is a retired inspector from an Indiana automobile transmission manufacturing plant and travels south with his wife, Katie, each winter to fish for stripers in the Apalachicola. He’s been fishing locally since 1992. Wallace catches most of his stripers on live shad or shiners.
While not records, both Finch and Wallace’s fish have earned each angler "Big Catch" certificates from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Wallace is also recognized as a "Big Catch Specialist", having submitted at least five Big Catch applications for striped bass weighing 12-pounds or more and sunshine bass weighing at least 7-pounds.