What specie are you referring to and how big is huge? Circle hooks, Octopus hooks, or something else with flattened barbs?
The only catfish I've seen targeted specifically with really small hooks relative to the fish's size was for Mekong Giant Catfish/Striped Catfish/Paroon Sharks in Asia and that was due to the way the bait was presented with a giant softball size mass of dough bait that would break apart when it hit the water then we used small pieces of styrofoam to suspend the hook in the floating debris where the catfish would unknowingly suck it up. For example we used like a size 4 octopus hook to catch Mekong Giants to 100lbs, just need a thick shank on the hook so it doesn't bend.
For our US species I use decent size circle hooks with live 6-10" bullheads for flatties or cut bait for big blues, nothing crazy like a 2/0 at biggest when targeting trophy sized ones or a size 2 otherwise.
The reason for the stinger hook was a lot of tail strikes when fishing baits that were sometimes as long as 16" where it would never hit a single hook through the back. It's very common in offshore fishing for billfish when you're using really big/long baits for the same reason, you get a lot of tail strikes while trolling.
