By any measure, it was a whopper — all 40.5 pounds and 47 inches of it.
It made for mighty good eating at the company Christmas party.
Heath Wilkerson snagged the rockfish in Chesapeake Bay a few weeks ago, and it was large enough to qualify for a citation from the Virginia Department of Fish and Game.
Instead of mounting it, Wilkerson, a mechanic, brought in a deep fryer.
The two-foot, four- to five-inch filet was enough to feed 20 people at a Christmas party where he works at Amherst Body Shop on Kenmore Road, run by his father, Reggie Wilkerson.
“We ate most of it,” Wilkerson said. “Beautiful white meat, it’s about the best fish I’ve ever had.”
Wilkerson doesn’t remember what test-line he used to snag the beast. He put a slimy eel on his hook as bait. “It took us 15 to 20 minutes to get him in the boat,” and it was his first rock fish.
Wilkerson wasn’t the only fisherman out that day.
“There were piles of boats out there,” he said. “This time of year, the water is full.
Wilkerson, 33, is a 1996 graduate of Amherst County High School. His grandfather, Harry Wilkerson, dropped off the photo last week at the New Era-Progress.
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