Photo by Ron Sinfelt

It's the return of the big ugly. Sporting mugs that only a mother could love, channel and flathead catfish start making their presence known in Arizona with the arrival of warm temperatures and hit full stride once summer officially arrives.

These fish, perhaps not truly ugly but with admittedly distinctive facial features, are big brutes. Flatheads exceeding 70 pounds taken recently from Roosevelt Lake and Laguna Dam have broken state records.

Catfish, particularly of the channel variety, are found at most warm-water lakes throughout Arizona, even relatively small bodies of water. A 43-pound, 4-ounce channel (40 inches long, 40 inches in girth) came from 265-surface-acre Patagonia Lake in southern Arizona. "Fish like this are bruisers," says Will Hayes, former regional fisheries manager with Arizona Game and Fish. "This particular contest between angler and angled lasted nearly half an hour, and while it may sound like one of those traditional fish stories, truth be told the fish pulled the (angler's) jonboat nearly all the way around the lake before it could be landed."

In the central part of the state, Roosevelt Lake gives up lots of hot-weather whiskerfish from the Diversion Dam in the upper Salt River Arm all the way down to the lake itself. These hogs frequently range between 30 and 50 pounds for channel cats and several flatheads that tip the scales in the 60-pound range each year.

Resident guide Art Chamberlain is no stranger to setting the steel on one of these barbells as he takes clients out in search of bass and crappie. "Because I'm on the lake a lot over a year's time, I manage to encounter a few big ones while searching for other species," he says. One of his largest catches ever came late in the season.

Checking his logbook to ensure accuracy of memory (fishing guides aren't allowed to stretch the truth and embellish stories), Chamberlain related, "The first week of December 2001, two clients and I were tossing 1/8-ounce crappie spoons in the shoreline rocks between the marina and the dam. I actually thought for a second I was hung up on the rocks -- until my 6-pound Berkeley Fireline started moving. I fought him for several minutes, then gave him to the client in the middle of the boat, who conducted his share of the battle for several minutes before he finally relinquished the pole to his buddy in the back of the boat. I had to follow the fish the whole time with my electric motor because he wouldn't get anywhere close to a net. Finally one of the clients reached in with both hands inside the fish's mouth and hoisted him aboard. We weighed him at a bit over 30 pounds and measured him at 38 inches before we took his picture and sent him back home to grow some more."

"In Roosevelt, you'll find most flatheads in the main lake hanging off steep cliffs with boulders," says Ty Gray, a former G&F fish specialist who specialized in the central Arizona lake region and was one of the regular workers lucky enough to conduct fish sample surveys in the spring and fall of each year. One recent October the department conducted electro-fish and gillnet surveys at two-dozen locations, catching, measuring, weighing and releasing nearly 1,000 fish representative of 10 species.

"Channel cats made up nearly 8 percent of our sampling," Gray said, "with the average channel weighing a little over a pound, and the largest weighing in at 12 pounds." Flatheads were less prevalent, making up about 2 percent of the survey samples. The largest fish in the survey was a flattie that stretched the tape at 38 inches and pegged the scale at 40 pounds. Average flathead size was just over two feet long, and most ran in the 10-pound range.