CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
219 
ing bait. A great blue channel catfish had earned for himself 
a reputation second only to that of the rattler when it came to 
plaguing these fishermen and ruining their pleasure for the day. 
Many fishermen had experienced contact with him, and more 
often than not he had seized their bait and had taken line and 
pole with it to the depths of the river channel. None had ever 
been able to take him in, though they vied with each other for 
the honor and notoriety of nailing his great head on their barn 
door. Each time such depredations were committed it was 
done with not the slightest air of showmanship, but merely as 
a part of this old bearded patriarch’s day’s foraging. 
It remained for a net fisherman to set at rest forever this 
raging controversy over this mythical diamond-back and blue 
channel catfish. It so happened that he had never himself been 
a party to it, but listened with patience to the evidence both 
pro and con. Like a true investigator, he merely “salted down” 
the evidence adduced and bided his time in the hope and with 
the confident expectation that something more tangible would 
one day present itself. As he was drifting along with the cur¬ 
rent, hugging the western bank and nearing a point at a bend 
in the river, some strange object entangled with the limbs of 
a great fallen pine tree revealed itself to his keen and observ¬ 
ing eye. The scouring effect of the river current, as it rolled 
against the clay cliff at the bend had finally undermined this 
giant pine which had fallen into the channel while its roots 
clung tenaciously to the soil ashore. A more careful inspection 
revealed to him not only the giant rattler, but the catfish as 
well. They were locked in mortal combat, the catfish with his 
vise-like jaws gripped firmly upon the form of the rattler, and 
the later with his long, poisonous fangs sunk to their depths 
in the muscles of the fish’s jaw. According to the estimate of 
our informant, the fish must have weighed not less than fifty 
pounds, and the diamond-back eight feet in length or more. 
Thus ends all that was definitely known of the record of 
these two champs. The details of this duel in which both per¬ 
ished will remain forever the secret of the muddy waters of 
the Ocmulgee. It has already been stated that such creatures 
do not perform freely for members of the human family. The 
