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Trevor Ruble, the founder and director of the Hooked for Life ministry, sent me these shots from a great day on the lower James River with Ruble's good friend, catfish guru Mike Ostrander of the James River Fishing School.

Ruble was fishing with friends from their church, Colonial Avenue Baptist, including Darren Bridgers (top) and Jim Rhodes. Bridgers' fish was about 39 inches long and was a fat 40 pounds. Rhodes' fish was 38 inches long and weighed 25 pounds.

Of the group of four's 20 fish, three were citations by either length or weight.

Have you ever seen a good bluefish blitz? The kind where a school of big chompers just attacks a school of prey? It's unreal.

I felt like I was in the middle of a blitz on Sunday when, after getting some project supplies at Home Depot, I swung into the soon-to-close Sportsman's Warehouse.

The place was an absolute zoo, with lines at that registers that stretched back toward the middle of the store.

Now, I could understand a buying blitz if everything in the store was 50 percent off. But most of what I saw was discounted 10 percent, although fishing terminal tackle was 20 percent off. The best I saw was 30 percent off hunting clothes, some of which already had previous discounts.

Now, 10 percent is better than nothing, 20 percent is getting somewhere and 30 percent is good. But the 10- and 20 percent discounts have been common at the store. All you had to do was get your hands on the discount cards SW handed out like candy at outdoors events and meetings.

The only thing I can figure is that everybody showed up looking for killer deals. When they saw the huge crowds they figured they better get in on the action, even without killer deals, for fear the items they were after would quickly sell out.

"I've had my eye on this tin of pellets for a while but I just couldn't do it when they were $3.99. But now that they're $3.60, I'm all over it! Yeah, man! I saved 40 cents! Now I excuse me while I go spend the next half hour in line."

Strange.

This morning did not start out well when I opened the paper and saw that the wrong picture had run with today's Fishing Report.

This picture of catfish expert Travis Patsell of Vinton and this awesome 28-pound Smith Mountain Lake flathead was supposed to run. Instead, due to a production glitch, we had a picture of Harry Townsend with a huge smallmouth bass he caught earlier this summer. That picture had run in the report in July.

The error was my fault because I attached the picture of Travis to the wrong story in our publishing software database.

I've gotten a lot of snide phone calls and e-mails already, and I'm sure more are coming. I'm glad some people are able to laugh about this because, at this point, I'm not.

As promised, here's that shot of me with a flathead catfish I pulled from my father-in-law Chick Whelchel's dock on Lake Blackshear in South Georgia during our recent family vacation.

As flatheads go, this was a little guy -- 9 pounds. But that's perfect eating size, and it's hard to beat deep-fried flathead catfish nuggets.

I can't claim that catching this thing was any major fishing feat. Quite the opposite, actually.

Here's the technique. Each evening I try to catch a small bluegill for bait. That's usually pretty easy but this trip it wasn't. Nearly every bluegill I caught was hand-sized. That's great if you're going to eat them (which we did) but I prefer 3- to 4-inch sunfish for flathead bait. I had one of those prime baits only one night. Something ate it but didn't get hooked. This guy hit a pretty good bluegill.

The catfish rig is an older surf rod with no reel. I ran 130-pound cord (which is designed for trotlines, actually) through the guides and tied it off on the handle. I left about 8 feet hanging out of the end of the rod, to which I tied a heavy ball bearing swivel, then a 3-foot leader of the same 130-pound cord. The hook is a Gamakatsu Octopus Circle, size 9/0.

I hook the sunfish behind the dorsal fin, toss it out, put the rod in a holder that keeps the rod tip about 4 feet off the water, then tie it to the dock. Most nights I'd hang out and fish worms on a couple other rods for channel cats for an hour or two, but I never did any good. As much as I'd like to pull all-nighters and fish a bunch of rod-and-reel rigs, that's not really possible with all the stuff we have going on during the day (when I'd be catching up on sleep). So I'd check the big rod first thing in the morning.

Chick's dock is pretty good for catfish because the channel sweeps in nearby and the catfish come out of the deep water after dark to prowl the shallows. I'm pretty sure I could really crush them if I bothered setting up more than one rod. With one bait in the water, it's a little tougher. Although something got my bluegill three of the four nights, this was the only fish I got. (I did get a 4-pound channel cat one night on a cane pole baited with nightcrawlers.)

Again, it's hardly fishing, but it's still fun. It's great walking down to the dock with my cup of coffee and seeing that rod bent over. You don't know if you've got a 4-pound or a 40-pounder.