A Fish Tale

How does a catfish get to be 101 pounds?

(Kristen Parker)

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So a teen-aged girl in New Richmond caught a catfish last month that weighed 101 pounds. Yanked it straight from the Ohio, with her dad’s help. The thing was butt-ugly.

Technically, it was a “blue’’ catfish, but I’m guessing that all those years spent in the Ohio River, grazing on battery acid and small car parts done wiped the blue right outta that poor boy. He’s all gray now.

Jaylynn Parker’s catch was a record and frankly, something out of a science-fiction movie. Again, it was no coincidence the fish emerged from the Ohio, which has been known to glow after a big rain, when the current kicks up all the atomic fallout coating the river bed.

The record was disputed initially, because as explained in the Columbus Dispatch, “a fishery biologist didn’t inspect the fish and declare it to be what everyone knew it was. Nor, as the rules specified, did anyone from the five-member Fish Record Committee get a look at the fish before it was released alive.’’

It’d been weighed, though. And there was that picture.