"I was rigged up with a double tie of 1/8-ounce white jigs and fishing white bass when a big cat hit one of the jigs," Peterson said. "It didn't take long to decide I didn't have a white bass. I was fishing off the rocks, and I didn't have a net, so when I saw this big catfish I played him until I had him 'broke to lead,' grabbed him and tossed him up on the rocks. When it hit the rocks the line broke, but I was finally able to get it on the stringer."

Peterson, a 37-year-old employee of a local educational service unit, has been fishing since he was about 4 years old -- and this cat is the biggest that he's ever caught.

"Hey, I caught a trophy catfish and I wasn't even fishing for cats," he said. "It's probably a good thing I had 8-pound-test line on my spinning outfit. The fish probably would have broken off in the current below the inlet if I'd been using 4- or 6-pound-test."

Wayne Fisher of Broken Bow works on the channel cats at Calamus Reservoir. One of his better days came on March 5 last year. He caught a limit of channel cats (10) in a half-day's fishing. The cats weighed from 5 to 17 pounds.

"I fish the reservoir along the dam and up on the west end of the lake near Gracie Creek," said the 44-year-old farm store salesman. "Last spring I had a super day in catching the limit. I was using dead shad for bait and I caught the 17-pounder about five minutes after I started fishing. The odd thing about the catch was that I had two rigs in the water and as I was playing the first one, a second one hit the other rod. I managed to land both of them; the second one weighed 13 pounds."

Sand toads, fairly common in the Nebraska Sandhills, have long been used as fish bait, but they're nowhere near as popular as shad, shrimp, crawlers or minnows. Austin Ries, a 12-year-old from Ord, is convinced that they're good bait for catfish.

"We were fishing off the bank at Merritt Reservoir," he said. "I had never used a sand toad for bait before, so I didn't know if they were really good catfish bait. I was using pretty heavy line on a spinning rod and I hooked a big cat. It took me about 5 or 10 minutes to get him up on the bank, and then I sent my cousin to get my uncle to help us get him off the hook and on the stringer."

Asked if he released the cat or ate it, Austin said they ate it.

"We (aunts, uncles and cousins) were camped at the lake, so after we measured and weighed it, my uncle Richard cleaned the fish and my aunt Tracey fried it. It was 32 inches long and weighed 18 pounds and 8 ounces, so everyone had plenty of fish to eat and we had some to take home."

Blood bait, either homemade or commercial, is widely used to catch channel cats. Daryl Smith of Grand Island used the prepared bait to catch a 33-inch 20-pounder from a private impoundment on July 30 last year. Frank Bruyette of Lincoln reports using "cow blood" to entice a Sherman Reservoir 40-incher on July 8.

Live bait such as minnows, crawlers and shiners account for lots of cats. Michael J. Bush of Greenwood uses chubs for blue cats on the Missouri River, upstream from Omaha.

"Blues prefer live bait," Bush said. "I use chubs because I have a little creek behind the house where I can get them easily, but the big cats will take big minnows, bluegills, suckers, carp and others, too."