Hanna Robbins with a big Potomac River blue catfish

I’ll admit to having a slightly unreasonable bias against catfish. There is some merit to it – notably the countless times that a big Potomac River cat has slammed my spinnerbait, Chatterbait or crankbait, left slime all over the line and often messed up the lure to prevent further usage.

That said, I’ve also had some great experiences with old whiskers. One particularly memorable one occurred in December of 2011 when my friend TJ Maglio set up a trip with Captain Josh Fitchett to chase some of the Potomac’s big invasive blue cats. We landed eight of them that day, all between 32 and 59 pounds. I gained new respect for a fish I’d previously denigrated.

After my father-in-law saw the pictures from that day on the river, he asked why we’d gotten replicas of our Amazon peacock bass, but not the cats, which were bigger. I had no good answer, except for the fact that one fish was “exotic” and the other was considered by many to be “trash.” Not a convincing reason, I suppose.

Other people don’t have those same mental challenges. I’ve seen some great catfish mounts across the country. Upon a little bit of examination, I’ve also noticed that there are lots of catfish tattoos out there. Here are some of my favorites.

Here’s an anatomically-correct one from Matrix Tattoo in Florida:

And another from Duke Blosser in Indiana that appears to have stolen somebody’s Rooster Tail:

And another particularly fierce one from AZ Inked:

This tribal version from Sydaeus Mobile Tattoo in Colorado is one of my favorites (and you can get it done AT HOME):

Obviously, because catfish are often not very colorful, there are lots of black and white tattoos that tell the full story. But there are also some really colorful ones that do a great job with a more complete palette, like this version from Harvest Moon Tattoo:

And this sleeve from Teresa Sharpe is downright beautiful:

There are plenty of cartoon catfish, too, like this one from the Nix Tattoo Show in Ontario:

And while we’ve yet to target the various species of catfish that inhabit the Amazon basin on any of our Brazil trips, apparently people get tats of those beautiful specimens, too. Here’s one that outfitter Steve Townson posted of a surubim.