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Catfish swim through a murky stream of race, class and regional rivalry. No other fish in North America defines where you stand in this world quite so much as the catfish. Eating one can border on being a political act.
To be an eater of catfish is, for many, to identify yourself firmly with the southern half of this country: Okie noodlers, Cajun jug fishermen, Tennessee trot liners – wizened old black men sitting motionless on the banks of urban rivers, staring intently at the end of their rod. Waiting. Here in California, catfishing is largely associated with the state’s Southeast Asians, a group that has its own cultural baggage.
All this is, of course, a generalization. Thanks to the herculean efforts of outfits like the Catfish Institute, which oversees the nation’s catfish farming industry, farmed fillets of Ictalurus punctatus, the common channel catfish, appear in supermarkets across the land. A whole new generation of piscivores happily munch their fried catfish without so much as a thought to matters of race and class.
But the old bigotry does not die so easily.
It was with these thoughts churning in my head that I found myself driving north along Highway 99 at dawn in high summer. I was heading to the town of Colusa, to meet a man named Jay Dee Garr. Jay Dee had had the temerity to offer a catfishing trip as an item in a recent Ducks Unlimited auction. Catfishing? In California, land of trout and salmon? I looked at the auction sheet: Only one other person had bid on it, at a half-hearted $50. I bid $120, just to put some distance between myself and any competition.
I need not have worried. No one else cast a bid. The reason I’d jumped so eagerly on this opportunity was because I wanted to finally catch cats in my new state. Years ago I’d lived in Virginia, and it was there that I learned to love the catfish – and that fishing for them was laden with meaning. Most anglers I knew there liked catching and eating cats, but a certain set of social climbers – I called them the Orvis Boys — disdained cats as a fish caught only by black people and “white trash.”
The Orvis Boys often would cite catfish’s homely appearance and its chosen places of residence as reasons why cats were unfit to eat. Yeah, they are ugly. Slimy, too. And a catfish river is rarely as lovely as a trout stream. But this sort of criticism is just aesthetics, a petty rationalization. More serious is the charge that catfish are somehow more polluted than other fish. Disgusting bottom feeders.
At least in California, this is simply not true: Catfish are placed in the “good” or “moderate” category in 14 of the 23 state fish consumption advisories that mention them. Are they pristine? Nope. But sexier fish such as stripers, largemouth bass and sturgeon are universally higher in pollutants than cats.
Dawn rose on the road, and verdant rice fields shook off their layer of ground fog to greet the day. Egrets of all sizes prowled the fields, a flash of snow in a green expanse so unnatural for the arid Central Valley. Tired little townlets passed by, places that live or die by the rhythms of agriculture. Places that have remained largely unchanged for a century. A road sign welcomed me to Yuba City while The Who’s “Teenage Wasteland” blared on the radio. Fitting.
Fitting, too, that catfish would be so widely caught in this part of California. The Central Valley is the hot, dry working class heart of the nation’s most populous state. It is where Okie migrants came to rebuild after their farms blew away in the Dust Bowl; hearing a twinge of twang in people’s voices here is not uncommon. Ironically, the catfish arrived with the Okies.
In 1891, well-intentioned fish planters dumped 250 channel catfish into the Feather River at Gridley, just a few miles from where I was supposed to meet Jay Dee. All those fish died. It was not until 1942, when a hatchery foreman positively identified a channel cat caught in a research net, that the species was confirmed to live in the Valley. This was less than a decade after the wave of Oklahoma migrants first arrived. Had they brought their fish with them? Probably not, but the coincidence interests me.
I rolled into Colusa early. People were just beginning to move about. The town felt like Mayberry from the “Andy Griffith Show”: Big trees, old storefronts, pretty churches. Jay Dee Garr lives on the edge of town, at the end of a quiet street. A high levee protects his home from the Sacramento River, which lies just on the other side.
Jay Dee himself is an overcarbonated beer in a bottle about to burst. He is one of those ageless impresarios whose personality barely fits within his physical stature. At 74, Jay Dee has been around the block more than a few times: He’s been a schoolteacher, a soldier, a rice farmer and a biologist for Ducks Unlimited. He’s caught more fish, shot more ducks, and cooked more game than most men still living. Jay Dee is also an eater of rabbits and pigeons and carp – and of catfish. He is a kindred spirit.
We jumped in his pickup, rods in the back. Rye, his hunting poodle (yes, you heard right) rode along with us. It soon becomes apparent that we are not fishing in a boat on the Sacramento River, which flows just yards from the house. “I got all kinds of spots,” Jay Dee says as we drive out of town. “We’ll see if we can catch a few.”
Rice is king in the Sacramento Valley; only Arkansas grows more rice than California. And rice needs water, so a spiderweb of canals, sloughs, natural streams, minor rivers and irrigation ditches spreads across the valley. Where that water runs, channel catfish lurk.
We pull up to a canal where a giant irrigation pipe dumps the outflow from a nearby rice field. Time to rig up. Jay Dee prefers a simple rig for catching cats: Slip sinker, barrel swivel, a long leader, a small hook. “We got golden shiners or crawfish tails. Take your pick.” He chooses the shiners, I pick the crawfish tails.
Catfishing is all about patience, and placement. In swift water, channel cats like to hang out in eddies and holes, away from the main rush of the current. In slower water, they will move about a bit more. Plunk! Our sinkers slap the water and descend to the murky bottom. Now we wait.
Jay Dee has an endless stream of stories piled up from seven decades as an outdoorsman. I’ve heard many similar tales from similar men over the years, but very few share Jay Dee’s dedication to place. Other than a few years in the Army, he has lived his entire life in Colusa: More than 70 years spent observing the natural world in one spot. I am a nomad by nature, so this boggles my comprehension.
Needless to say I take any advice he gives me about presentation, bait and exactly where to cast my line. “Don’t cast there,” he points to an unremarkable patch of brown water. “There’s a ledge that will snag you.” Good to know.
Fishing is slow. Nothing here. A bite there. No fish. Then we roll up to a stream with a little waterfall. “Lurline Creek,” Jay Dee says. He tells me to cast my bait below the waterfall so it will circle back with the current and come to rest directly underneath the fronds of an arundo, a giant reed. “There ought to be a catfish right there,” he said.
He was right. Tink! Tink-tink! A bite! The moment that thought registered in my head, the fish struck hard and ran downstream with the bait. Finally, a decent fish. My immediate concern was to make sure it did not get itself wrapped around the fronds of the reeds. I use powerful braided line on my reel for just such an occasion; it allows me to control a fish without worrying that the line might snap.
Jay Dee clambered down the bank with the net just as I brought the catfish to the shore. With a swift scoop, the cat was in the net. A nice one, too. Maybe five pounds. Jay Dee handed me the net. “I don’t carry your fish,” he said. Well OK then.
Minutes later, Jay Dee had his own fish on the line, and our roles reversed. I handed the net to him, fish wriggling inside. I said nothing, but we both smiled.
We moved on. Hours passed, and the temperature sailed past 94 degrees. No more bites. After a while, we ran out of stories and fished in silence. The air was still. A barely perceptible buzz of bees and flies grounded the soundtrack of rice country. The songs of kingfishers and crows and various tweety birds gave us a melody, the burbling stream a harmony. Heat mirages shimmered in the distance. Clouds of dragonflies cruised around our heads. One landed on the end of my rod, looked at me for a long moment, then flew off.
I asked Jay Dee why he thought some people didn’t like catfish. “That’s their problem,” he said.
Yes it is.
Loved your piece. Gave you a shout out on my website: https://mamashighstrung.com/blog/2012/07/kitchen-think-this-weeks-food-news-you-need-to-know-4/
As a Texan, I just love catfish… I’ll be firing up your blackened recipe soon!
I buy farm raised catfish at the local supermarket and use it in Moqueca (Brazilian fish stew with coconut milk) and most oddly, in ceviche. I like Alton Browns catfish ceviche recipe, but with more peppers and garlic. Graprfruit juice and lime juice (and zest of both) go really well with what amounts to catfish and fresh pico de gallo….
What a lot of people don’t know is that some cats strike on cst lures. Here in a pond of the Sierra foothills my son once caught an 8 pounder on a rooster tail.
Hank, you bring back some good memories of fishing for cat in the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers that ran by the front door of home in Modesto. It was there, where I would pedal my way to the Ninth Street bridge, bait the line with chicken livers and fish for my favorite catch of the day: catfish. Unfortunately, you’ll come to find that most of the cat pulled out of our rivers have high levels of mercury contamination, a leftover of the CA Gold Rush. There are far closer areas to fish for cat, such as the canals that line North Natomas. I see people casting for cat all the time.
The channel cat. There’s not a farm pond around here (Indiana) that wasn’t stocked with them. When I was a kid you didn’t fish for them if you had all your teeth but now I think people have come around to the great sport that they are. In Indiana they are in almost every body of water and can be caught with just about anything. I got permission to fish a lot of ponds by promising to keep every cat I caught. Some people think the reason they only have little bluegill in their pond is because the big cats are eating them. They don’t understand that the fish are stunted from over population. There were a lot of Saturdays of me standing at my fish cleaning table with a bucket full of 5″-6″ bluegill, one or two cats and the cheapest 6 pack I could buy.
The song is called Baba O’Riley.
Hank,
As an Arkansan I grew up eating catfish one way, corn breaded and deep fried. Now I think there is a movement to use catfish in more ways. On Friday I had Tumeric Yogurt Catfish; a mix of Indian and Southern flavors, it was tasty.
Thanks for the story,
Ben
One more thing. It was asked how to clean a catfish. There are a bunch of videos on Youtube that show you how. One guy, Captain Vincent, usually has the best ways to clean many varieties of fish. Here’s how he cleans a catfish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-GT5wlgVMY
Hank,
Great story. We usually end our fishing trips with some time on shore to drink some wine and fish for cats. Great fun and relaxation.
Here’s a couple of fishing tips I learned from my buddy who learned from master here in Nor Cal. 1) Don’t use any weight on your line, just your hook and bait. 2) If the catfish gets the line wrapped around an obstruction don’t try and horse it in, just let the line go slack and wait. The catfish will eventually swim itself free. I was amazed the first time I tried it.
Hank, what a lovely story. I prefer my characters to be a bit on the crusty side! I had never eaten catfish before I met my husband, a Texan. Now we live in Idaho where most of the catfish are caught/eaten by the migrant worker community (as far as I can tell). We went and caught a huge mess of them one night on the Owyhee and had a whole bunch of friends over the next weekend for a catfish fry; most had never eaten them before. Good intro! They were a hit.
The most fun I’ve ever had catfishing was in Hells Canyon on the Snake. We’re whitewater rafters and decided to take a cast and blast trip opening weekend of chukar season. What a trip! Chukar (usually ridiculously strenuous hunting) practically greeted us on the banks, a few geese also made it into our cache, steelhead were running and the channel cats were HUGE. We even got to see a sturgeon porpoise in the eddy next to camp while we were having our morning coffee. These were all in addition to the super fun rapids and gorgeous scenery. We will be repeating that trip next year! I highly recommend the experience if you ever get the chance. The one thing we won’t be repeating: running after the chukar through the desert in our drysuits. Nearly death by personal sauna!
I absolutely love this piece, Hank! Your description of Jay Dee is perfection. We’ve caught a few catfish over the years, both in the Rappahannock and the Shenandoah, and I love catching them, but not cleaning them. 😉 We have a friend who loves catching, cleaning, and filleting them though so we trade him venison for catfish. This ongoing barter works well for all of us!
Anyway, sounds like you got your money’s worth with Jay Dee and a 5-lb cat!
Shirley
Steve: I’ve caught a few channel cats in Minnesota. I used to catch them when I lived in St. Paul. Big fan of sheepshead (freshwater drum), too.
Corey: The state of California issues the advisories and there is a website for them. Not sure if Georgia does the same, but I bet they do.
Jose: Not a fan of bullheads, but I am with ya on the flatheads! Awesome-tasting catfish.
Jackson: I used to live on blue cats and channels when I lived in Fredericksburg back in the day. Summertime and the fishin’ is easy!
Ricardo: My only experience with tropical saltwater catfish was in La Paz, in Baja Sur. We went fishing right in the bay, and we kept catching pretty white catfish. I believe that is the Chili Sea Catfish, Notarius troschelii. The guide, a local, turned his nose up at the fish. We kept two and they made some of the most fantastic fish tacos I’ve ever eaten!
Hey Hank, any thought on salt water catfish? specifically in the Gulf of Mexico waters. The times I have catch them always throw them back, because since I was little was told by my dad they are not fit for consumption, and seems that everybody around here agree.
Once I was fishing where the River Soto La Marina meets the Gulf, in Tamaulipas, near La Pesca, and just about every two or three times I cast got a cat. Must have caught 20 or more of them during the day. All went back to the water.
A blog post fit for a book. Excellent story. I feel the same way about dogfish shark.
I spent the last few years fishing mostly for largemouth bass and crappie. This year I made an effort to get good at catfishing. I can honestly say that I’d rather catch catfish than largemouths now. Both are fun, but I think that catfish yield more and better food per fish in exchange for less work. No scaling required and if you filet them right away then you don’t even need to gut them.
I used to fish for channel cats in the north branch of the Muskegon river, usually at night. My brother-in-law and I would load up the boat with deli food and stuff to drink and then spend the night fishing, eating and drinking, bobbing in the current in his twelve-foot vee-bottom aluminum boat with it’s powerful seven horse outboard that was somewhat prone to blowing head gaskets.
We used cut bait. In the early spring we’d seine for alewifes. Chop them up and freeze them, great bait for cats.
I’ve never cared all that much for the taste of channel cats, but what the hell, it was fun and much better than frozen fish sticks from the stupor markup.
I always liked it better when we went after bullheads. Much tastier IMNSHO. Or Flatheads! Flathead cats are outstanding.
Very enjoyable post. Right smack in north Georgia, I’m very familiar with the anti-catfish sentiments, even said a couple of those things myself before. Where were you able to find the fishing consumption advisories/pollutants? Sounds like good info to have.
Thanks
Thanks Hank,
Brings back memories from when I fished for catfish via trotline with my Grandad.
Despite living in a fish paradise I still love a good piece of fried catfish.
Sounds like my kind of a day fishing.
Great post – now I will watch for a follow up on your favorite ways of cleaning and cooking them.
I have eaten them all my life, but they have never tasted as good as when I went ‘down south’; I cannot account for the difference.
If you are ever in MN, try some river fishing. As big yachts motor by, we sit in a repaired flat bottom and catch channel cats…