A Catfish Story From 6/12/12

I had a successful morning at the fish market (local Kansas CFAP lake) picking up some channel filets for the freezer. Nothing great just nice eater size. On hooking the fifth fish trying to fill the creel limit while playing the fish I initially though that this fish was going to top my 10 pound rule and I would be releasing this fish and spending more time trying for my fifth fish. I was able to keep it out of the anchor chain and away from the fish feeder but never able to get it to the surface to have a peek at it. I positioned the net in the boat for landing this fish and after a 5 - 8 min tussle I was able finally able to get the fish to the surface and was I surprised. I didn't even need to net him to get him in the boat - just lifted him by the line into the boat. Well what the heck was going on here?

Here is a couple of pictures of this fish at home getting ready to dress it.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...g/d621ec07.jpg


http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...g/981246a9.jpg


Looking at the marks on this fish and thinking back to the movie Jaws and their use of the term bite radius I'm now tending to think I was tussling with a nice flathead that was considering this channel as bait.

I was just using inch size or less pieces of cut bait on a circle hook to catch my fish but after this incident I'm thinking I could be using much larger bait if I was wanting to catch some big cats. Anyhow that's my take on what happened here and thought the story was worth sharing plus checking to see how the plausability of this theory holds up.

Would have been nice to see the one that got away. But over 10lbs so you wouldn't keep him anyway. Great pictures Lynn

Nice.that's pretty neat.Had to be fun playing tug of war with that bigger one!:Hands Clapping

Bet that was fun on the 10 foot rod.

Always fun.. Nice job..

or could it be the catfish version of a " blacknose crappie"...... or is that just 'ol Lee havin fun with a magic marker Rofl...sounds fishy to me....hard to trust a crappie/catfish-fishermannonono

Just a good time, glad you had the experience of course one has to go out and do before they experience anything good or bad, and all have lessons.

Well said Blackdog, I keep learning lessons all the time!

Ill bet that one had you scratching your head for a while! lol!! Great read! I enjoy reading about others fishing trips and the odd things that go on. It seems there is always something new going on.