[Red Jones]

In rivers in Kansas, a century ago, people used to make a living by diving into the river, they'd swim right up next to large catfish, pet them to calm them, and then stick a big hook in their mouths by surprise, then they'd swim to shore and pull them in. 100 lb fish were not uncommon.

At base of Hoover dam there are a whole bunch of very large catfish, I'm told up to 200 lbs., they just sit and wait for all the dazed fish to come down through the dam and they eat them.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

My dad retired from a power station here in cincy told me about catfish in the ohio river getting caught up in the cooling inlets of the plant 2 and 300 pound cats with tailfins 5 and 6 foot tall the divers have to go down every once in a while and repair grates that those big fish destroy hes seen divers literaly jump out of the water refusing to go back in because those fish are so big !

[Free Trapper]

My brothers' inlaws have a diary handed down from ancestors that settled in S.E.Kansas in the 1800s.It's an interesting read.

The diary said they were catching over 100 pound catfish regularly and had weighed one of the bigger ones at about 204 or 206.

The diary didn't say what kind of cats but the river they fished was either the Verdigris or Elk,I don't recall which but do remember where they fished was not too many miles from the convergence of the two.

I used to fish both rivers and from my experience they were good for flathead but not blues.