The big one that didn’t get away got away anyway

Fishing has always been a big part of Ralph Moore’s life. In his younger days, he made a little extra money selling carp bait which he concocted from his own secret recipe. He got to meet a lot of fishermen selling his product around the lakes at St Joe and all the way down into South Missouri.

“I’ve heard a lot of good fish stories,” he says. “I can tell a lot of them, too.”

But Ralph isn’t telling a whopper when he says he caught this 40 pound flathead Wednesday morning, July 23, out of Lake Viking. The catfish was 44 inches long. It’s head was nine inches wide. Ralph caught it off the bank with a line tied off a tree using bluegill for bait.

Ralph, 81, admits he isn’t as steady on his feet as he used to be. He had to call on his neighbor, Joe Buchner, to help him get the big fish onto the bank.

“That’s the biggest flathead I’ve caught,” said Ralph. “I caught a 20 pounder one time just fishing for crappie on an ultra light. That one was hard to get into the boat.”

Lake Viking Security weighed the flathead before Ralph put it back. The lake pays $10 for each flathead that is released, then 50 cents over 20 pounds. Ralph made $20.

That kind of good luck reminds Ralph of another story. He and his late wife Lorraine used to have a travel trailer and they’d stay all night fishing at lakes around. One time he won a prize for the biggest fish — a silver dollar. Ralph kept that silver dollar until the price of silver skyrocketed one year and a man paid him $22 for it.

Ralph has lived at the lake since 1985. He and his wife moved from St. Joe where Ralph used to work at Quaker Oats. His wife passed away in 1996. They would have been married 57 years.

“We used to come out, my wife and I, and fish and vacation at the lake on weekends. I bought this place on the hill.”

Ralph had open heart surgery in 1994. He’s had four bypasses. He knows he has to keep active so for exercise he walks a mile with his dogs every morning. He checks his line while he’s out.

He’s had pretty good luck catching nice-size catfish off the dock. The morning before he caught the flathead, he caught a 12 ½ pound blue cat. His grandson, Jessie Watterson, helped him butcher it. Some of it’s still in the freezer. Not too long ago he caught a big carp.

“I raised him up (out of the water) so I could see him. I knew I couldn’t get him on the dock so I just let him go. I didn’t want to keep him anyway.”

“Carp isn’t that good eating when it gets too big,” Ralph says. “I like carp. Four or five pounders, dressed, scored, and deep fried — those bones dissolve. I’d just as soon have a carp as anything.”

He still uses his homemade carp bait.

“I still catch fish on it. I’ve not caught a carp as big as that catfish. The biggest carp I caught was about 32 pounds.”

He and his wife used to cook carp in a pressure cooker and can it. “You can’t tell it from salmon patties,” Ralph says.

Ralph’s son Bobby lives in Weatherby; another son Larry lives in St. Joe. Two of his children are deceased, Ronnie and Joann.

Another young relative, Carl, lives with Ralph and has an office in the house. He also has a friend Carol Carder from Cameron who comes and helps him when he needs help.

Ralph checked his line the morning after catching the big flathead, but there was nothing on it. He set it again. “They’re out there,” he says.