So I'm too impatient to catfish; bores the hell out of me. I know we have some in our lake but the HOA will have kittens if I float milk jugs out there.

So instead I found a duck decoy floating loose on the channel at the lake of the ozarks last weekend and I'm going to use it. So the next question is....how the hell do I run a trot line?

I was thinking of just tying a 5 lb weight to a rope, tying about 5 treble hooks to the weight and throwing some catfish crud on each one, then tie the rope to the duck and throw it in the water. Is there anything more complicated than that?

Gay

40 year old fish winding up on a dinner plate because Jethro caught it on a trot line.

More like a 20 year old fish and in all reality it got that big by eating a shitload of stuff that could've easily been eaten by other fish that can now get bigger/stronger in their own right.

I see no real benefit to going all 'circle of life' here, but why the hell does it matter? Moving things out of the top of the pool allows you to keep the population below it stronger. Having monsters for the sake of having monsters serves no purpose.

That's a fish over world record size, and winding up on a dinner plate isn't a fitting end to a once in a lifetime fish in my opinion. Plus it's genetics are gone forever. Flathead i believe grow 3-5lbs a year. There is a reason why you don't see many flatheads over 50lbs anymore, because the trophy ones are overfished and eaten all the time.

If you want to trot line and eat trophy catfish, knock yourself out.. I'm not going to stop you. But i don't agree with it.

Having a fish like this live for the sake of it being a monster makes perfect sense, because if it is truly 135lbs, it's 12 lbs bigger than the world record rod and reel flattie.

Its genetics are gone? How do you figure; that thing has tossed its genetics all over the place in the decades it's been floatin' about. Now its time for it to get dead so the next round of its genetics can move up in the world.

Would you prefer it just wash up on shore as a carcass?

This isn't a 50 lb fish that still has a ton runway in front of it. I can see some frustration in things like that. We have a tendency to pass on good bucks when hunting in the hopes of them turning into great bucks. Putting a 70 lb fish back in the water may make some sense there. But that fish IS that great buck. And it's almost certainly near the end of its useful life.

20+ years and it's not been caught; that's plenty of time for one of those rod and reelers to have gotten it. Now it's pretty much on the way out either way so why you'd have a preference for it ending up hooked over just keeling over and washing up onshore somewhere is a bit of a mystery to me.

If it can still spawn then it can still pass along genetics to its babies and hopefully more can grow to that size. But if it is passed its sexual maturity then you are right. It just saddens me to see a world record fish eaten instead of say in a tank at Bass Pro or something.

Like i said, I'm not going to tell you what to do with your fish. I just don't agree with eating trophies.

Its not just your area, I've been noticing a serious uptick in the number of people vying for the same places over the last few years

TV shows have at least something to do with it IMO

Facebook fishing groups are cancer.

When i got back to where i was parked, i was the only car with Kansas tags.

There are tons of people from Missouri who fish these spots. I assume off tips from those groups.

Everyone thinks they're Jeremy Wade these days

Ha. Yeah.. that guy lives the dream.

I belong to like 4 or 5, but the only one i post in only has like 25/30 active members, who all know about my spots anyway

Because I can't think of a better thread, here's what I got to watch over lunch this afternoon...

http://chiefsplanet.com/BB/picture.p...pictureid=1843

We have a pair of bald eagles that have nested about a 1/2 mile away and they seem to have decided that my back yard is a hell of a fishing hole. On Sunday he came down right at the water's edge next to that little bush in the bottom left of the picture) and snagged a little bass. Today about 3 minutes after this picture he went up that right into that cove in the back, snagged another one and took off to the west with it (out of the right side of the frame).

I'm really hoping that they've recently set up shop and this will become a common occurrence. I've seen at least 1 of them the last 3 days and this afternoon both of them were zipping about. Pretty cool shit.

Edit: Ugh...file-size limits; I had to compress that to the point of not being all that interesting. I wonder if a photobucket or something would work better. He's damn sharp lookin'...

What happened to the world record fish?

Never said. At least to my knowledge.

Heh, yea. It died. Same with the last two record blue cats, one was 135 lbs caught a few years ago and the latest one was 142.

There is an asterisk next to that record because though it was caught by fishing rod and reel it was snagged. See, the guy that caught it was fishing for crappie in the Elk City Reservoir when he saw a huge flathead floating near the top and struggling. So he threw his jig across it's back, snagged it and brought it close enough to shore for him to wade out and bring it in.
He tried selling it to places like Bass Pro but it died so he donated it to the KDWP. They did an autopsy and found that the reason it was struggling is because it was having troubles digesting a 6 lb. carp.
Elk City Reservoir is about 40 miles from my house so I heard all about it.