Catfish tries to eat Basketball

I would have jumped on the back of that thing and rode it.

Origins: Yes, these photographs are real, taken at Sandalwood Lake in Kansas on 28 May 2004. An account of the circumstances under which the pictures were taken appeared in the Wichita Eagle on 30 May 2004:
From Panama to the Great Lakes, Bill Driver's done pretty well fishing over the past 50 years.

Now he's wondering if he'd have done even better with a different kind of bait. "I never considered using a kid's basketball," Driver said. "Maybe I should have."

Friday afternoon, Driver was standing on the deck of his house near 119th Street West and Central when he saw an eight-inch ball floating in Sandalwood Lake.

Noticing the ball wasn't floating normally, Driver wandered to his dock for a closer look. A catfish had its mouth stuck around the ball.

Driver hollered for his wife, Pam, to get a camera while he unrigged the sail from his nine-foot boat, wading into the lake and corralling the fish toward shore with the sail as a seine.

Several times, the flathead tried to dive, only to have the ball buoy it back to the surface.

The fish appeared to be exhausted and offered little resistance once in the shallows.

Things may have gone easier had the fish the strength to struggle.

"I just couldn't pull that ball out of its mouth," Driver said. "I was lifting up out of the water as best I could by the ball. I finally sent my wife to the house to get a knife."

Driver carefully deflated the ball. Estimated at 50 pounds, the fish swam toward the deepest part of the lake.

Driver has no plans of targeting the fish in the near future.

Instead, he'll probably continue to fish for the bass and panfish that swim within the one-acre lake.

"I guess I might try fishing with a golf ball," Driver said. "Smaller fish, smaller bait."

Bring out the gimp.

My parents have catfish that size- someone was draining a lake near them, they saw the fish flopping around in the mud, got a trashcan full of water & moved them to their pond...

I **** you not- they feed 'em daily & the catfish will come to the bank when they bang on the can of fish food- apparently catfish will keep on growing as long as there's food available and these are about as big around as your leg.

Must be we get the farm raised cats up here - Like DB said, batter 'em and fry 'em up - pretty good eatin' up in this neck-o-the-woods.......

yeah when there's damns that are 100's of feet deep, you'll find STRANGE things down there. A buddy had a picture of a fish that was unnamed that he caught like that. I swear it looked like it was 1000 years old.

Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know Catfish got that big. I do like 'em salt & peppered.