A guy who lives at Lake Conroe (50 miles north of Houston ) saw a ball bouncing around kind of strange in the lake and went to investigate.

It turned out to be a flathead catfish that had apparently tried to swallow a basketball which became stuck in its mouth!!

The fish was totally exhausted from trying to dive, but unable to, because the ball would always bring him back up to the surface.

The guy tried numerous times to get the ball out, but was unsuccessful. He finally had his wife cut the ball in order to deflate it and release the hungry catfish.

You probably wouldn't have believed this, if you hadn't seen the following pictures:

Thats wild, damn catfish will eat anything.

Deffinately not a coonass! That catfish would have been mounted with that ball in his mouth as a conversation piece or at least ate for supper that night. Dont understand if your out fish why would you release a fish like that? Bunch of good bellie meat on that fish yeah!

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/catchfish.asp

Apparently it was in Kansas & photos were back from 2004.

That has been around forn a long time, but still kool.

Some would say to keep him and eat him, but I have to much respect for an animal to have to suffer like that just to kill him. I would have let him go as well.
Once I caught a red that had a six pack ring around his gills and it looked like he had it around him for a while so I cut the ring off and let him go because I felt bad about taking an animal that had to struggle like that for such a long time.

But each to their own. (Off my soapbox)

Like I said each to thier own. Its just how I feel about an animal that has had to struggle (due to human stupidity) to survive, otherwise he's on ice.