JUMBO FLATHEADS CAUGHT IN ARIZONA

Two stories about anglers catching large catfish in Arizona waters recently made the news. In the first, Steve Cooper (left photo above) was on a family fishing outing with his nephew Mark Henry in the waterways near Parker on Sept. 11 when he hooked something big.

“I fought him for a good half an hour, and he got my blood racing several times,” Cooper told ABC-TV 15. Finally, he landed the huge flathead catfish. Cooper said this was the biggest catfish he’s ever caught and initially thought it might be some type of record.

Cooper and Henry had the Arizona Game and Fish Department weigh it on a certified scale and it ended up weighing 46 pounds, 13 ounces – a big flathead and a family record, but not the state record. The Arizona record for catfish is 76 pounds, 8 ounces, caught in 2013 at Bartlett Lake by Ed Wilcoxson of Surprise.

The two anglers were perfectly fine with that. “We just want to have a good time and eat good catfish, that’s all,” Henry told the TV station. See the ABC 15 and HavasuNews.com stories.

In the second story, angler Trino Díaz (right photo above) was recently fishing a canal with his friend Ryan Leren near 67th Avenue and Thunderbird Road in Peoria when he felt a pretty strong bite. “I told Ryan that this felt like it could be a personal best,” Diaz told 12 News in an interview.

Forty-five minutes later, he pulled a 42-pound flathead catfish from the canal. Diaz said it pulled him a quarter mile down the canal as the angler fought with it, trying to tire it out. “It wouldn’t even fit in the net, only its head would,” he said. “It was a big fish.”

Diaz regularly fishes the canals and typically throws back the fish he catches. “The fun of fishing is in the fight,” he told 12 News. With that in mind, he threw the large catfish back, saying he hopes to catch it again someday. See the 12 News story.