I was fishing a 3" shad and caught a tiny blue cat that could barely fit the shad's head into his mouth. Funny thing is no part of the hook was in the fish. The bend of the hook was about 1/2" in front of his mouth. Either the shad was jammed in there such that he couldn't let go or else he just wasn't going to give up that meal no matter what. Persistence pays off as I let him keep his dinner.

I've had that happen before. I was flathead fishing with a perch about 5-6" long and caught a blue cat that couldn't have weighed over 2 lbs. Pulled him in and noticed that he just had the perch lip locked and the hook wasn't in his mouth.

Thats a mystery to me,how a catfish will bite off more than it can chew, and how they will bite a hook with a belly full.

One time on a trot line I was running, there was a 2 lb channel cat that was caught on a hook. Well there was about a 15 lb flathead that was locked on to that channel. The flathead was not hooked anywhere, but would not let go of the smaller fish, so we were able to pull in the flathead.

Blues are mean fish. A couple of weeks ago I caught an 8 lb blue that had the hook inside it's mouth but not "hooked", it had clamped down on the 125 lb line and wouldn't let go. After I got it in the net and got it's lower jaw with the gripper, the hook just fell out. That same morning I had a 2 lb blue swallow a whole 3" perch on an 8/0 hook all the way to it's gut. If them blues are pre-spawn gorging they will gobble up about anything with a ferocity like no other fish.