Surprise of a big flathead catfish comes on a spring baseball trip

Baseball and fishing, talk about heaven, especially when a 40-pound flathead catfish is included.

Jim Hall was in Louisville, Kentucky, for son Nik Hall's Brother Rice baseball games last week when, boom.

"Whenever I travel for his baseball games, I always bring some fishing equipment with me," Hall emailed. "I got out Friday morning on the Ohio River before the rain picked up again. It was a short outing. I was casting a jig around for some bass. I didn’t really think I was going to catch anything- high and rising muddy, cold water is not ideal conditions for bass.

"I flipped the jig into a slack water area right along the seawall when she bit. I instantly knew it was a big fish, not necessarily as big as she was though. I fought her for about 10-15 minutes before she tired out to where I could reach down and stick my whole hand in her mouth and get her on shore."

He estimated it at 40-plus pounds. It was caught on a 7-foot, 5-inch medium heavy 6th Sense bass rod with 17-pound fluorocarbon.

Man, that brought back memories of 25 or so years ago when I would double up covering the Class A baseball state finals in Springfield with finding an outdoors story to do in the off time. One year, I caught 75 or so fish from Lake Springfield between games.

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.

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