Catfish
As I mentioned in the section about my childhood in the Middle East, I love fishing. As a child, I fished every chance I got, and as an adult I have fished at times, but throughout most of my adult life, I haven't lived in places where I could fish, or I just didn't have time (or money). But about a year after I moved here, I suddenly realized that I was living right next to a major river. This brilliant revelation came to me as I was driving across a bridge and looked down. Amazing. Well, it turns out that my most wonderful wife, Stephanie, fished as a little girl, but she too had never fished during her adult life to any extent. So, we took it up again. Now in this river, there are a lot of kinds of fish, but it turns out that pollution has depressed their populations to a deplorable degree. All except catfish and carp which are a pair of pretty indestructible species. Carp don't really interest me, so I set about fishing for catfish. It didn't take me long to find out that there are two kinds of catfish in this river, channel cats and flathead cats. Channel cats are what most people know as catfish, and they are basically omniverous scavengers. I never knew about flathead cats until recently. Flatheads are predators, and they are the largest growing species in this river. The world record flathead weighed 123 lbs. Take a look at the link. By now Stephanie is an addict at this sport. If we can't go fishing for a while she gets the shakes (almost). Below are pictures of a seventeen and a half pound fish we caught.
We took this picture the day after we caught two twenty-eight pound fish in a period of forty-five minutes. Stupidly we didn't have a camera for the twenty-eight pounders, so the next day we went out and got a disposable 35 mm. to take with us. The two twenty-eight pounders measured 38" and 37" in length. The longer one measured 24" around it's belly and the shorter one measured 25". I know it wasn't the same fish twice, because the second one didn't have the hook wound where the first one was hooked and because they looked different and measured different. We always let them go after we weigh and measure and photograph them.
It's now next year (2003) and we have caught more big fish. My wife Stephanie caught this 30 pound flathead, which measured 40" long by 25 1/2" around it's belly. I held it for the picture because it was too heavy for her, and she didn't want to put her hands in it's mouth. (These fish kill their prey by crushing it.)
Below is the same fish on the ground with Stephanie's hand for size. Note the hundred pound spring scale she is holding which had just been used to weigh this monster.
Below is a 24 pounder from this year. (2003)
But that big one is still out there.
PS The reason I look so goofy in these pics (aside from the fact that I am goofy) is that they were taken in total darkness with a flash. This being the case, Stephanie is peering through the viewfinder trying to figure out where I am while I hold the weight. This accounts for my "hurry up" expression.