I am a native Oklahoman attending college at DePauw University, a small liberal arts school in Greencastle, Indiana. For my senior year (this coming school year), I will be presenting an Honor Scholar thesis. The topic I have selected is something along the lines of "The Myth, Legend, and Pursuit of the Monster Catfish in America" with a special focus on the midwest and Oklahoma. Since I will be home for the summer in what can basically be called "Monster Catfish Alley", I'm trying to get a lot of research done in these next couple of months.

If anyone can share with me their personal stories, sightings, campfire tales, pictures, etc., please, please do so!! I've got enough vague "monster catfish at the base of the dam" stories to fill a book, so if you have one, make sure it's firsthand or at least a detailed secondhand account.

Remember that I'm looking for North American tales, as we're all well aware of the giant catfish (such as the Wels) of Europe, Asia, and South America.

Thank you thank you!

In california the army corp of engieneers owns several deep water resevoirs. i lived there for some years in the central part of the state and there are rumors there that focus on the army resevoirs. years ago there was even an article about engieneer divers that went down to work on the New Melones resevoir and reported encounters with catfish weighing several hundred pounds.... Try some research on these resevoirs.... New Hogan .... New Melones, and also an East bay Municipal utitilys district resevoir called Pardee......... this lake and its sister lake Camanche were leach fields for industrial mines for the past hundred years.... leaching heavy amounts of mercury and lye and sulfides into the water...... there have been mutiations in fish in lake Camanche. the crazy thing is i worked for one of these lakes and they would actualy issue warnings about chemical poisoning and not to eat the fish..... this water is piped to Californias bay area for drinking..... aside from reactor resevoirs these lakes will be the most pobible to contain monster cats. I have also scanned Melones resevoir and detected swiming objects about the same size as the boat i was on 15ft in length......

I grew up near the Mississippi and there are many stories of big cats,my biggest is only 35 pounds. If you want to find info on the biggest try looking at river city history sites that is where I have found the biggest cats. The big cats are still out there but not as many as at one time like in the early 1900s and sooner. If you decide to go on a quest to catch them I can give you some tips that might help just let me know.

I worked with two guys from okl, they told us a story of how they were fishing for cat , and they found a bigone in a partially submerged stump...guy said he put his arm down the things throat and held on till he pulled it out....said it weighed 54 + lbs...we didnt believ him....till he brought pictures....good ones detailled his story as he told it......guy had a hellava bruise all around his arm....y'all is crazy to do that

I go up fishing at New Melones a lot, all I have heard is vague stories. And also that one diver was so shaken by his experience with the giant cats he refused to dive there again. Though I have no detailed story, I can vouch for Jaypeth, you won't be wasting your time doing some research on New Melones resevoirs and the others.

I'm just imagining the sting from a monster catfish...

OUCH!!!

Belive it or not me and my brothers do what is called catfish graveling. This is fishing for catfish and using your arm for bait. Sounds intelligent don't it. If I can get a pick of this one my brother caught, It's lying around here I will post it on here. It is over 55lbs.

How graveling works is you go onto a lake. Find a bank with a lot of rocks making up the shore. Then we kinda swim or slide along on our stomach running our hand up underneath the rocks and look for whats called holes. These are hollowed out places the female catfish go to lay eggs. We have gloves on. Naturally a pregnant catfish isn't going to be happy about a human arm coming into her hole. And not being able to see you have no idea whether there is one in there or not untill it grabs hold of your arm like a vise grip on steroids.

Needless to say it is a very effective way of catching fish. You can usually catch 3 or 4 large catfish 25 lbs or over doing this in about 4 hours. It's great fun too. Specially when you take someone who thinks he's a hard a$$ and he gets chomped. And they always want to watch first. Then after seeing this enourmous whale of a fish come out they are very wary to stick their hand back in a hole trust me. And if you have never seen a live 50 plus pound catfish in person you have no Idea what I am talking about. They are inhumanly large. Actually I am going again friday and will take a digital camera so I can snap a few pics and maybe post them on this for you. Or u2u me and let me know. Last time we went my brother got a 35lb one. It was enourmous.

^ I think this also known as "noodling".

Right you are! "Gravelling", "Grabbling", "hand grabbing", "hogging", "noodling"...they're all one in the same! I'm devoting an entire chapter of my thesis to noodling, seeing as my homestate is one of four states that it's actually legal in!!

Keep em' comin'! I'm having a ball reading this stuff.

I know of a small private pond in upstate New York with at least three seven foot long carp. It blew my mind the first time I saw them!

I can't help with much else, sorry.

Hi I live in Central North Carolina, we have a 5 foot catfish in our backyard. We tried to catch it using whole chickens, but it just eats the bait. We tried attaching a hook to it and using empty bottles to use as bobbers and he just drags them around, very interesting to watch, but haven't caught him yet.

two pints of booze

tell are you a bad fish too?

Would you please look at the sand around the cat, and look at the stringer, and look at the skin. This is naothing more than a close up picture, camera on the sand angle.

Lake Eufaula, between Georgia and Alabama, is known to have big jokers in there, over one hundred pounders.

It's actually a dream of mine to search America for giant catfish. I was planning to start at Lake Eufala, actually. But this won't take place for many years.