It was a nice warm summer day in the 1980's, Ken Robinson and my self launched out of Cullercoats for a few hours fishing off Whitley. We were soon into some nice codling, but one fish Ken hooked into didn't want to see daylight, it scrapped what seemed to be for ages, then this dark shape appeared on the surface, I for one had never seen anything like it before, so I grabbed the gaff and heaved it through its chin and hauled it over the side and onto the floor of the boat. Well today I had brought my golden retriever "sam" out with us, he took one look at this black ugly looking thing, thrashing around on the floor and scarpered into the cabin. Me and Ken both jumped up on the gunnel's to get out of the way as it went ballistic. Ken had a wicker fishing creel and it made mince meat outa that, I was trying to subdue it with a large steel file which for some reason I had in the boat
. Any way, once subdued, we finally came down off the gunnel's and laughed and laughed. The picture went into the Whitley guardian local paper with a caption about "dog on the run from catfish or something. Anyway, a one to remember



