The 20-foot fishing boat left the Ridley Township Municipal Marina, navigated Darby Creek and settled on the Delaware River below the Commodore Barry Bridge near Chester.

It was there that Christopher Barrett, 19, while fishing with his father, Craig, caught a white perch that turned out to be the largest ever caught in Pennsylvania, writes Frank Kummer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

““We usually keep a few perch to eat, and when I went to put that one in the cooler, we both said that’s got to be the biggest white perch we’ve ever seen,” said Barrett, who hails from Mohnton, Berks County.

The perch came in at 2 pounds, 1 ounce, massive by perch standards. The previous record-holder was back in 2008, a perch also caught in the Delaware River that weighed under two pounds.

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) verified the record Friday. Barrett’s perch, caught on April 14, beat the old perch record by 5 ounces.

Breaking the record has been nice, but Barrett is more pleased he caught the fish with his dad.  

“We go fishing all the time together, and it’s our favorite thing in the world to do,” he said. “We’ll never forget this.”

Read more about the largest Pennsylvania perch in The Philadelphia Inquirer.