Charleston man lands redfish from his couch while watching football game

Schall’s ‘couch fish’ ends a spectacular week on the water

Why do men sometimes do things? Because they can. Put Jason Schall in that category. He caught a fish from his couch – because he could. You read that correctly. Shall caught a redfish from his couch.

The “couch fish” – as it has been dubbed – was the combination a simple idea, the proximity to a lake behind his house on Charleston’s Daniel Island, and, of course, college football.

Two weeks ago, Schall had a fantasy week of fishing going and didn’t want to stop, but the South Carolina Gamecocks were on television, and he didn’t want to miss the game. Not wanting to give up fishing, either, an offhand comment was made, and the idea of the couch fish was conceived.

“Before that ever happened … I entered a tournament on the Saturday before and caught the (largest) and second-largest redfish in the tournament,” Schall said. “To get the first and second largest in a small window of time, I was beside myself. And over the course of the next couple of days, I took some time to fish and was catching a ridiculous number of large fish. It was really unusual.”

One of those large fish was only 1½ inches shy of the IFGA’s all-tackle redfish length record, he also caught a 34-inch redfish on 4-pound test line, and he’d had a couple other fish certified as records by the IFGA the same week.

It was understandable why he wouldn’t want to stop fishing.

“I invited some friends out to get together and watch the Clemson and Carolina games, which were back-to-back that day,” Schall said. “I had few people come out, but I really wanted to fish, and I was talking to the first guys who got there. I knew the game was getting ready to start and I wanted to watch the game, but at the same time, I didn’t want to stop fishing. So I cast my line out, opened the spool and walked back into the house. I was holding the rod and my buddies kinda laughed.”

It was at this point that Schall had a strong bite. So while sitting on the couch, he closed the bail, reeled in the slack, set the hook and reeled in the fish, a red in excess of 20 inches – just because he could.