VIRGINIA BEACH -- Fred Barnes has caught some pretty big striped bass in his lifetime.

But nothing had prepared him for Wednesday.

Barnes, a 63-year-old Chesapeake, Va., telephone contractor, apparently shattered the state striper record with a 73-pound giant caught near the 4A Buoy off Cape Henry.

Barnes must yet apply for the record, and that application must be approved by the state record fish committee.

Clay Armstrong currently holds the record for a 68 pound, 1 ounce fish caught off False Cape in early 2006.

Barnes' striper, which are commonly referred to as rockfish along Virginia's coast, is one of only a handful of documented rod-and-reel caught stripers topping the 70-pound mark. It missed the International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record -- a 78-8 fish caught off a New Jersey beach in 1982 by Albert McReynolds -- by a mere 5½ pounds.

It hadn't been a banner day prior to Barnes' hook-up.

"Nope, it had been kind of slow, actually," he said. "We had three of four in the box, but they hadn't been anything special.

"Then this guy decided to get hungry right about lunch time."

Barnes was fishing with charter captain Pat Foster on the Country Girl on a recreational trip.

The huge, white fish with long black stripes running the length of its body hit a red and white Stretch 30 trolling lure. The fish was fought on a Penn 30 level-wind reel spooled with 50-pound test line.

"We were actually doing about five knots trying to get to some birds when it hit," Foster said. "We troll a lot slower than that when we're striper fishing. So it's pretty wild that this fish hit.

"This thing by far tops anything caught on my boat before. I'm ecstatic."

Once hooked up, Barnes said the fight took him about 10 minutes.

"We kept fishing for a little while longer," the angler said. "But we kept looking at it and decided to come on into the docks.

"I thought it was going to weigh somewhere in the 60s, but I never dreamed it would be more than 70."

Barnes previous biggest rockfish was a 58-13 caught in 2005 from the Eastern Shore surf. With that big fish Barnes won the 2005 World Striped Bass Tournament, a three-month-long tournament run out of Virginia Beach.

Wednesday's pending state record measured 52 inches long and had a girth of 31 inches.

Barnes said Wednesday afternoon that he had no plans to have the fish mounted.

Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament director Lewis Gillingham, who registered the fish at the Virginia Beach Fishing Center, for months had been expecting the existing state record to get broken.

"To the point that we set a new record is not surprising," he said. "Striped bass are a highly sought-after fish this time of year, and the numbers of big fish off the coast has been incredible.

"But to break it by five pounds is pretty impressive."