05-17-2011, 07:20 PM
When my brother and I were kids we would bike over to a local stream and then hike back into the woods to a beaverpond to fish. I loved that beaverpond -- I caught the largest trout I ever caught in Western Washington there -- a 21 & 1/2 inch cutthroat. (most trout in Western Wa are small -- like 6 inchs!) Now the area is a housing development.
Anyway, on our way there we would pass this swampy area along one of the ditches. It was kind of a small pond, but every year it mostly dried up as the summer progressed. Once as it was just in the process of drying up, my brother saw a movement in the mud. We stopped, and not having any aversion to mud, we investigated. After poking deep in the mud what we thought was probably a frog turned out to be a 15 inch catfish!!! It had dug itself down about a foot in the mud, but it was still plenty lively. Amazing!!!
To this day I can't figure out where he came from, or how long it lived in that swamp. That ditch wasn't really connected to any waterway, and catfish weren't in our trout stream that drained the area. You just never know where fish will survive or how they get where they do!
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Anyway, on our way there we would pass this swampy area along one of the ditches. It was kind of a small pond, but every year it mostly dried up as the summer progressed. Once as it was just in the process of drying up, my brother saw a movement in the mud. We stopped, and not having any aversion to mud, we investigated. After poking deep in the mud what we thought was probably a frog turned out to be a 15 inch catfish!!! It had dug itself down about a foot in the mud, but it was still plenty lively. Amazing!!!
To this day I can't figure out where he came from, or how long it lived in that swamp. That ditch wasn't really connected to any waterway, and catfish weren't in our trout stream that drained the area. You just never know where fish will survive or how they get where they do!
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