Caught this guy tonight . I know he isn't huge compared to some standards , but for my neck of the woods , he is a good fish , weighing in at 15.3 lbs  on 2 different scales .  ;D

Great fish! I won't ask you to be too specific with the location, but how and where did you get him?

Daniel -

We were fishing the IL River , using cut asian carp as bait . Actually have several other pics of nice fish (4 -8 lbs ) that we caught today . All in all it was a real good time , especially since I don't catfish that much .

you can see our bait of choice on the front of the table  

I was going to guess that fish came out of the Illinois when I saw you were in central Illinois. I grew up in Quincy and would cross that river often on the way to Jacksonville.

These days we also use a lot of Asian Carp for catfish bait. They seem to work just as well as shad, and they are easier to catch. I wish we could use them live for flatheads, but the regs say they must be killed immediately.

Oh well.

Keep on catching!

Dan