Utility Park and Zoo in Clay Center, Kans. has been a favorite for area family outings for generations of residents. In addition to a free zoo and plenty of public park swings, slides, picnic spots, and walking paths, there’s also a small pond open to youngsters age 14 and under for fishing.
One day in early July, local 11-year-olds Bayler Langvardt, Layton Schwartz and Hayes Urban went to the pond to go fishing. They cast out a small bluegill bait fitted to a spinning rod and reel, and waited for a bite.
“We were there for about one hour, when the rod started moving and Layton grabbed it,” Hayes tells Wired2fish. “He set the hook, and gave me the rod because it’s mine, and I started reeling.
“It fought really hard, much stronger than other fish we catch there. It took me about 20 minutes to get it near shore.”
For a time they thought their catch was a turtle. Then they believed it was a big channel cat by the size of splashes it made, though the big fish would eventually reveal itself as a blue catfish.
When the boys finally saw the whole fish and they could tell how big it was, they waded out and tried to grab it, knowing it would break the fishing line if landed another way. They had no landing net, so they pushed and shoved and pulled the catfish to shore, then realizing how big it was.
“They didn’t want to kill the fish, so they put it under a water spigot to keep it wet and alive,” Justin Urban, Hayes’ dad, explained to Wired2fish in a phone interview. “They wanted to pick it up and get it back into the water, but they couldn’t lift it. That’s when they called my wife Micah, who was at work. She called me and I went to the pond to learn what was going on.”
Justin arrived at the pond and the boys were struggling with the cat, trying to weigh the wiggling and wet fish on a small scale they had.
“The scale came up with all kinds of numbers, and we never really got a true weight or measurement of the fish,” Justin said. “We fish the nearby Republican River a lot for catfish, and I’d guess it was 50 to 60 pounds or more.”
With help from Justin, the kid crew eventually got the big blue catfish back into the pond and it swam away unharmed. Since their catch, the kid’s pond at Utility Park has been jammed with youthful anglers trying to catch a similar giant catfish.
Justin says that over the years anglers catching catfish in other waters – like the nearby Republican River – have put big fish in the pond that they caught elsewhere. That’s where the little lake’s big fish came from, he says.
“There are more kids fishing there now than I’ve seen in a long time,” Justin said. “Parents drop them off at the park in the morning and they fish all day. That’s a great thing for kids to do these days – being outside and doing stuff that’s positive and staying out of mischief.”
