a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole

The directors of "Fish Bait" must be on the lookout for fish stories. Today Jeff Joslin sent along news of the Goonch, a giant catfish believed to be feeding on corpses in India. Sky News has fish photos. Bodies are regularly set adrift on funeral pyres in the Great Kali River. The locals now think that the Goonch have started attacking live swimmers because they are not satisfied with eating the partially burned remains.

All this sudden publicity for the Goonch comes because biologist Jeremy Wade will host a documentary called "Nature Shock: Flesh Eating River Monster" on Britain's Channel Five later this month. On this side of the ocean, an American fisherman, Larry Dahlberg, has a DVD of his adventures with giant catfish in Venezuela. Larry has given Jeff permission to use some of his footage in "Fish Bait."