The Big Blue Fish
In various parts of the country, fishing season has been underway for weeks. Here in the northeast, my local waterway, the middle Delaware River, has been blown out days on end by lots of rain. The fish are not happy. I am not happy. So I turned to vicarious fishing pleasures on-line.
From a literary standpoint, probably more high-falutin’ words have been written about trout (some of the best by guys like Nick Lyons, Tom McGuane, and Ernest Schwiebert) than any other species, but there is probably a greater word-count about largemouth bass coming from popular magazines.
Then there’s the star of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: the blue catfish, a well-known behemoth of the Mississippi River watershed by the time the action of the novel was supposed to take place, in 1839. While tales of VW-sized catfish abounded then, and occasionally arise now, the confirmed world record was actually caught in Huck’s river, a 124-pound fish caught in May of 2005 by a lucky fellow named Tim Pruitt.
So I was much pleased to learn that while I was kayaking over several miles of clay-brown water recently, trying to catch something, anything, two fellows in Virginia, Dan Ayers and Tim Wilson, nabbed a big blue cat that will become the new state record there. They battled the fish for 20 minutes, and then rigged up an aerated well to keep the fish alive so they could make a 30-mile drive to a calibrated scale big enough to weigh the fish. That’s what happens when you catch a potential record fish — you need to find a certified scale quick. The big cat was released where it was caught. 
Blue cats get fat, don’t they?
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Howdy, Scott! Looking forward to the column. I do a decent amount of fishing myself in the NYC/Long Island area… will be sure to keep you posted on any good catches.
Nice to meet you, Mike. Definitely keep me posted about your fishing. I’d like to catch some big bluefish this summer. Haven’t done that in a while.
In response to another comment. See in context »I caught a stupid amount of massive bluefish two summers ago on a trip out to Montauk. A bit far from where you are, but primo blue fishing out there.
In response to another comment. See in context »Scott, I’m looking forward to seeing where you go with this, and perhaps having some discussions. Sounds pretty cool.
Very cool, and a very classy way for the fishermen to handle things.
(But next time, tell us how big the fish was, and link to the source!)
[...] catfish are very much for real. The first post I ever wrote for True/Slant concerned a record-sized blue catfish. Numerous Americans like to fish for big cats using a hand-to-fish method called [...]