It was late afternoon Feb. 22 on a small, unnamed frozen lake in southeast Connecticut’s New London County. Young Jacob Trantalis was with his 9-year-old brother Parker and uncle Kelsey Socha.
They had tip-ups on the 18-inch-thick ice and, using small minnows, had caught a few small perch.
“My brother had walked away from the boys for a minute when Jacob noticed one of the tip-up flags was wiggling a bit,” Jacob’s mother Caroline Socha told Wired2fish. “He and Parker ran over to it and saw the line moving, so he grabbed the line and hauled on it.”
Fighting Through the Ice
A heavy fish was on the other end of the line. Jacob tugged hard, trying to haul it toward the six-inch diameter hole in the ice. After catching a glimpse of the fish through that hole, he thought it was a bass because it was so large.
“He tried pulling the fish up and out of the water, but it was too heavy,” said Caroline, of Manchester, Connecticut. “He then reached down through the hole, grabbed the fish by its lip, and pulled it up and out and onto the ice.
“The boys started jumping up and down and yelling. My brother saw them and quickly came over because they’d obviously caught something big.”
A Whiskered Mystery Fish
The trio of ice anglers soon left for home and were in a quandary about what to do with the fish. When they contacted Caroline, she let them know what her online research indicated: They needed to weigh the fish on certified scales and have an authority identify exactly what species of whiskered fish Jacob had caught.
At a nearby grocery store, the 20-inch-long fish weighed 5.37 pounds. At first glance, the fish appears to be a run-of-the mill catfish. The fish has already garnered an online audience, which said it was a channel catfish, then a white catfish.
“The state people say it’s a white catfish but on their description of the lake we fished, white catfish are not listed,” Caroline explained. “We think it’s a bullhead, a brown or black one.”
Potentially a Record Catch
It’s important to determine the bullhead species, since Jacob’s bewhiskered catch may be a state record.
The brown bullhead is most common to Connecticut, and the current record fish weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces, caught in 2025 by angler Rowan Lytle.
While there is no black bullhead record in Connecticut, you can find the fish in the state, though they are less common than the native brown bullhead.
If Jacob’s fish is a black bullhead, it likely would be a species state record. But if it’s a brown one, Jacob’s 5-pound-6-ounce fish would be just a fraction shy of record status.
The Identification Quest Continues
Identifying Jacob’s fish is a little complicated now that his uncle Andy Bednar cleaned and ate it.
“But he saved and froze the head, bones and tail for later use in his lobster trap,” said Caroline. “There may be enough of the fish for someone to positively identify Jacob’s catch.”
Caroline will try working with state authorities to get a confirmed ID of the fish. She may contact fisheries folks at the University of Connecticut and Yale University, too.
“Neither college is too far away for us to show them what Andy has left of Jacob’s fish,” Caroline said. “I feel like I owe it to my son to know what fish it was he caught, which could be a state record.
“We’re also considering having a taxidermist make a replica mount of his fish because Jacob is just so excited about it.”
