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Light line and tiny hook reap
monster catfish
By Don Doxsie
Quad-City Times
Jeff Flaherty has caught huge sharks and monstrous tarpon while fishing
down around the Florida Keys.
But he’s not sure he’s ever gotten as much of a fight from a fish as he
did this week, just a few miles from home.
The East Moline resident reeled in a 40-pound, 5.6-ounce flathead catfish
in the Rock River near Colona, Ill., on Tuesday.
And he did it with 8-pound test line.
"I couldn’t believe I got him in with that size line,’’ said Flaherty, who
fought his flathead for a half hour. “I just had
this little night crawler
on an itty bitty No. 6 hook, and I’d just gotten my line in the water in
this deep hole. I hadn’t even got a decent cast yet.’’
The fish twice took his line into a snag of trees, and Flaherty figured
he’d lost him both times.
“The second time he got hung up there for about 10 minutes,’’ he said.
“It’s just a miracle that he came out of there.’’
When he and a friend finally got the fish on shore, they faced another
challenge: finding out how big it was. They stopped at two supermarkets in
an attempt to get it weighed but didn’t find a scale large enough until
they went to Stashu and Sons Sausage Shoppe in Moline.
As big as it was, the fish was far short of the Illinois state record of
78 pounds for a flathead caught in Carlyle Lake in 1995. A 123-pounder was
caught in Elk City Reservoir in Kansas in 1998.
But chances are, those fish weren’t caught on 8-pound line with a
bluegill-sized hook.
“It’s just unbelievable that I didn’t lose him, considering all that,’’
Flaherty said.
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