180 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK 



CATFISH OF THE ATLANTIC AND WESTEEN 

 WATEES. 



No artist, not even Landseer himself, could give a correct 

 picture of this familiar old friend. A profile does not convey 

 a correct idea, and a perspective view won't do ; so I give it 

 up in despair, believing that photography would even fail in 

 its likeness. 



It is not necessary to tell the angler that there are many 

 species of Catfish in this latitude. There is the Catfish of 

 our sluices, meadow-ditches, and ponds. The less ugly White 

 Catfish, of rare excellence for the pan, which comes up our 

 rivers in April, stays all summer, and goes back to brackish 

 or salt water in winter. And there is the great " Sockdologer" 

 of the Mississippi and its tributaries, with a mouth large 

 enough for a little boy to get his head into, and a throat big 

 enough to thrust his leg down. Old Jack, a " short-haired 

 brother" of the angle, down in Mississippi, has declared to me 

 he has seen one " as long as a cotton bale." I have, myself, 

 seen one carried through the streets of New Orleans, tied by 

 the gills to a fence rail, with a negro man supporting each 

 end, and the tail of the fish touching the ground. I have 

 heard of them weighing one hundred and twenty pounds ; 

 but I forbear, lest the reader should think I exalt this fish 

 above measure. At the cabarets along the levee at New 

 Orleans, I have heard the music of the frying-pan, as steaks 

 of these " whoppers" were cooking, and have seen the laborers 

 eat them with an appetite, but never had the curiosity to taste 

 of them. 



