Gone Fishin’: Could two famous rivermen really have met their end while grappling giant fish in a Kansas river? (Eric McHenry, November 6, 2025, American Scholar)
Commercial fishing on the Kaw was a viable profession not only because of the size and abundance of the fish but also because of the now-illegal methods used to harvest them: Abe and Jake were both known to drag giant nets, sometimes trapping 300 pounds’ worth of carp, buffalo, and catfish in a single outing. More daringly, they would dive for their quarry: They’d swim to the base of the dam, or under the wooden floor of an old flour mill, feel around for a big cat, snag it with a gaff hook, and wrestle it to the surface. One summer day in 1902, according to the Lawrence Weekly World, Abe hauled in catfish of 35, 60, and 104 pounds “by diving and stabbing them.”
If that sounds life-endangering, it was. Around Lawrence, it’s generally been understood that either Abe or Jake (or maybe both) died that way—drowned in pursuit of a bewhiskered leviathan. I’ve been hearing versions of this tale for years. Some folks say that the drowned man was never seen again; others, that he washed up on a sandbar downriver, still locked in a death embrace with the big one that didn’t get away. Fascinated by this story and bemused by its fishiness, I decided to take my own deep dive.