Braxton Blackketter with his near-record-size blue catfish, which he landed over the weekend. (Submitted photo)
There’s something fishy about this story.
For starters, if you ask 14-year old Braxton Blackketter of White Hall where he caught the blue catfish that is his equal in size, he will tell you— “In the bottom lip.”
At least that’s what Braxton’s mom, Laci Ford, said.
But she’ll also tell you that Braxton isn’t being coy when he answers that way. And he doesn’t like to carp; he simply doesn’t want anyone else to know about that special fishing spot along the Mississippi River that he shares with his grandfather, Kenny Loy.
“He’ll also tell you that he couldn’t have landed it if it weren’t for his grandfather, who taught him everything he knows about fishing,” Ford says.
The “it” Ford means is a 91-pound catfish that Braxton, who weighs only 91 pounds himself, landed over the weekend.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime fish,” Loy says.
If verified, the 51-inch-long blue catfish would fall just short of the Illinois record catch that took place in 2005, when Tim Pruitt hooked a 124-pounder, also near Alton.
