Freshwater Fishing – Texas Catfish or Chameleon?

There’s so much information to be found on the Internet!

I was reading about a gentleman who caught a rather large catfish in Texas last month. How large – the catfish weighed 45 pounds, measured 41 inches long, had 28 inches in girth and was 9½ inches across its head. Oh! … And it was caught on 6 lb test line!

Now I know that certainly isn’t a world record fish, but you’ve got to give props to the guy for landing such a large fish on such light gear! Unfortunately there was no picture of the fish in the article I was reading. Perhaps that’s because he was too embarrassed to show the pink spinning reel he was using! (He claimed it was his wife’s!) lol

But I digress … The reel (pun intended) reason for the topic of this post is the other catfish caught down in Texas. The one that had the coloring which was similar to a killer whale! The size of the fish was not given, but the coloring was. The catfish was “a blue catfish that was colored in a vivid black and white pattern, much like a killer whale.” Very unique coloring for sure!

Turns out that this wasn’t the first catfish caught in that lake that had this coloring. There were 3 – 4 other fish caught in the last 4 decades that exhibited this coloring pattern. Another fellow, who is the curator of aquaria for the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, said that he had a “black and white blue catfish on display in that facility that eventually reverted to a normal bluish gray color. The same thing happened to a killer whale-colored blue cat in Cabela’s Fort Worth store, where curator Tim Huebner said it took about 18 months for the fish to morph into a traditional color.”

Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State stated that the condition is called partial albinism and could result from an injury or stress caused by environmental conditions. Who said that the chameleon is the only animal to change its color?

So I was wondering what it was that was in that lake in Texas that was causing such stressed out catfish? Perhaps the fish there can read and all the bad news going around is stressing out those poor cats! Hah – guess we’ll never know!

If you’d like to read the article, you can find it here:

Crazy Catfish

Have a good day and I’ll catch you later!

Editor’s Note: Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State was kind enough to send a picture of the uniquely colored catfish for everyone to view. He said the picture was sent to him from Texas Parks and Wildlife fish biologist – Bruce Hysmith (the actual photographer is unknown). So here’s the picture and many thanks to Professor Bonner!

Texas Killer Whale Catfish
Killer Whale Catfish

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The Secret Improves Freshwater Fishing Results

Your Attitude Can Affect Your Fishing results!

With all this talk about “The Secret” and calling positive energy into your life, it reminded me of an article I read years ago on how to improve your catch while fishing. I believe it was an article in “Field and Stream” but I’m not 100 percent certain of that.

Anyway, what I remember from the article was that the writer was talking about his friend and how he approached fishing. His friend didn’t really act like he was going to catch anything when they went fishing together and most often, he wouldn’t. He didn’t expect to catch anything, though he had high hopes of doing so.

The author went on to explain that since his friend didn’t expect to catch anything, each time he would get a strike, he would miss setting the hook and would ultimately miss catching the fish. The author then extolled the virtues of expecting to catch a fish – how you would cast a certain way and how when you got a strike, you’d be ready to set the hook and this would improve your chances of catching a fish. He also said to envision that a fish was following your lure and was about to strike at any moment.

I was young at the time I read it but I thought about it and put that piece of advice into practice. It has proven itself time and time again! I would almost always out-fish anyone I happened to be with and usually caught the biggest fish when a group of us would go fishing! Was it this “secret’ that caused me to be more successful? I can’t say for sure, but I can certainly tell you that it didn’t hurt!

Think about it – seriously – and it should make sense to you. If you’re ready to catch a fish, you’re more likely to do just that!

I had occasion to share this article’s idea with my sons when we went fishing over this summer. It was a hot sunny day and my older son was saying “there’s no fish here – we won’t catch anything!” I explained to the two of them how your attitude can affect many things in your life … including fishing! I then told them about the article and it helped my older son turn around his thinking.

Did we catch any fish that day? Sure we did! And I’ll bet that our attitudes had something to do with that!

Here’s hoping your attitude helps you catch more fish as well!

Catch you later.