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Catfish / Basketball Photos (Wichita Kansas)

punychicken

Gone But Not Forgotten
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This was a pretty interesting story from The Sunday Wichita Eagle Newspaper a couple of weeks ago. A resident in the area saw a ball bouncing around strangely in a nearby pond and went to investigate. It turned out to be a flathead catfish who had obviously tried to swallow a child's basketball which became stuck in its mouth!! The fish was totally exhausted from trying to dive, but unable to because the ball would always bring him back up to the surface. The resident tried numerous times to get the ball out, but was unsuccessful. He finally had his wife cut the ball in order to deflate it and release the hungry catfish. You wouldn't believe it if you didn't see the attached photos (in thread on story).

That's a big fish, odd bait though. But could fishermen use inflatable lures? Something with 'uber-buoyancy'.
 
punychicken said:
That's a big fish, odd bait though. But could fishermen use inflatable lures? Something with 'uber-buoyancy'.

That would take all the enjoyment out of landing a monster like that. Plus you never want to injure the fish, 'catch & release' is being strongly suggested in the sportsmen's community.
 
Great story.... and very nice to see that he removed it from the fishes mouth, and saved it!
 
that's truly stunning. good of the bloke to make the effort to rescue the fish.

once we found one of our goldfish with one of our small catfish stuck in its gob headfirst. the goldfish was fine, the greedy bastard, although admittedly it was a little tricky getting the catfish out of its mouth. unfortunately the catfish was already dead by the time we found it.
 
Aww, the poor little guy. Good to see they rescued it and yep, pretty incredible photos.
 
The link in post #1 is dead, and it's anybody's guess how long Photobucket will reliably serve up the photos.

Here's a link to an early account of the catfish and Bill Driver of Wichita K). It provides a summary account of the incident and the photos.

http://www.jeffbridges.com/fish.html
 
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