Steve and Catfish

95lb blue catfish that Terry and Michael landed on the Ohio River March 15, 2022!

I saw this today and it reminded me of it. He used to talk a fair bit about the attractions of catfish. I can relate to his admiration for them, especially monster Flatheads. I have never seen one but since I was a kid the idea of a mysterious apex predator lurking, like a bad dream, in mud stained water has been appealing. It is another case of On the Edge of the Wild where wilderness is a state of mind that can be embodied in a prairie river that everyone else ignores. The only catfish I can remember seeing was a small brown bullhead I caught in my home river where I didn’t think anything but trout and suckers lived. I was around 14 and it was so unexpected I was gobsmacked. I found out later they were the only native catfish and depending where you looked for them not that rare. It was a far cry from a 100 lb flathead but it sparked an interest as did illustrations in an old Field & Stream article from the 1950’s. The article had that innocence of the time before the internet made everything familiar. The illustration that stuck was of a group of guys looking for a place to fish and seeing the head of a giant flathead stuck on a stake by the stream. Their slack jawed wonder was priceless and perfect fodder for an impressionable kid obsessed with fish.

There haven’t been many books, other than manuals, on catfishing. We are in need of some lyric ones. One that Steve recommended in his book on books was the above, The Catfish as Metaphor: A Fisherman’s American Journey, by Steve’s friend and mentor Dutch Salmon. I read it and liked it.

Catfish get more respect now, especially in Europe, where fishing for Wels catfish is a cult thing. They run into the 100’s of pounds. They can provide exciting fishing as seen in the videos. Then there are the Amazon migratory catfish, that are also huge, but more like salmon versus what most think of when it comes to catfish.