Biggest fish I ever saw caught was a catfish, but maybe it seemed so big because I was a kid.

My uncle used to "noodle," and one day I went with him. It was either in the Nueces River or the Frio River in west central Texas. We were out camping for the summer and my grandad's brother came in for a couple of days, said he'd catch a fish for supper. I would've been five or so and was a good swimmer, so my dad told me I could go with him but to stay well back. I had no idea what noodling was.

We both went into the water and my uncle drifted downstream along a bank, feeling up under the grass. Both those rivers rise from springs and the water is clear and cold up near the headwaters, and I had on a little dive mask and snorkel and could see everything he was doing. He felt along, and then he began to wrestle and stir up the mud. The water got cloudy so I broke the surface and treaded water, watching for him.   When he came up he had a catfish on the end of his arm. He was a small guy, my uncle, and I remember the fish being about half as big as him. He'd reached into its mouth and grabbed it by the gills. Took him a couple of minutes to get leverage enough to throw the fish up onto the bank.

His wife put a couple of stitches in his forearm and I saw that he had dozens, maybe hundreds of scars on his arm. My grandmother fried the fish with cornmeal and it fed a dozen people that night.