644 
FOREST AND STREAM 
November, 1918 
HIS SOUTHERN MAJESTY—THE CATFISH 
FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN THE CORN AND COTTON BELTS THE 
CATFISH MEETS A DEEP HUMAN NEED AND MEETS IT ADEQUATELY AND WELL 
By W. L. MACILRATH 
I N the corn and cotton belts the catfish 
is king. No potentate is so pursued and 
sought after, no king has half so many 
dainties dangled before his nose for his 
favor, nor half so many adjectives ex¬ 
pended in his praise. He is pre-eminently 
the fish of the common people, and the 
vast majority of the common people swear 
by him. No fish in that section has so 
vast a following. If a man goes into a 
restaurant where fish are served, it is ten 
to one he orders catfish. Not all of them, 
of course; I am speaking of the vast ma¬ 
jority of the residents of the corn-belt. 
For there are enthusiastic and successful 
bass fishermen there who like to eat the 
bronze-backed warrior as well as they like 
to catch him. And there are sportsmen, 
plenty of them, who take their annual 
trips to the mountains of Colorado or to 
Canada after the gamey and brilliant-hued 
trout. Some of these gentlemen will per¬ 
haps pretend they never fish for cat. But 
I will wager an “iron man” that they 
would not so staunchly stand by their con¬ 
victions as did the old darky, who, when 
he caught a big bass, contemptuously threw 
it back and exclaimed, “When I fishes fo’ 
cat I fishes fo’ cat.” 
In the Middle West the small boy cuts 
a “wilier” pole, ties a rusty hook on some 
of his mother’s “carpet chain” and hies 
himself to the hole where the bullheads 
hide. If he catches a big one or two h£ 
experiences a transport of fisherman’s joy 
such as he will probably never feel even 
with the landing of his first rhark or tar¬ 
pon, if he ever lands one. For the vast 
majority of people the catfish meets a 
deep human need and meets it well and 
adequately. The mechanic, the clerk, and 
the man about the river towns takes his 
cane pole or split bamboo according to his 
means and taste, and “hits it” for the river 
on Sunday morning, between whistle blows 
of his daily grind, for a little recreation. 
The game in his mind’s eye is catfish. 
The luckier chap who owns any kind 
of “gas cart” thinks that the use of his 
car is necessary to any “fishin’ trip,” and 
cranks her up; at about the same hour the 
mechanic first mentioned is traveling his 
path through the weeds to river bank, he 
of the car goes forth to a distant lake or 
spot on the river to fish, also for catfish. 
His conception is to go twenty or thirty 
miles to some club-house where he can 
mix picnicing and fishing, to the certain 
relative failure of the fishing. Perhaps he 
has a spinner and a plug or two in his 
kit, but he gets tired throwing these, and 
puts on a bait and sits in the shade, plays 
cards, and smokes while waiting for a 
bite from a catfish. He winds up by tak¬ 
ing home a mess of catfish. Also he car¬ 
ries home a feeling of having been fish¬ 
ing, and that, after all, is the thing. 
Where the catfish is king 
Then, there is the sportsman in whose 
blood there runs the demand for vital and 
aristocratic action. Who demands “class” 
in all that he does or touches; and who 
cannot bring himself to “waste time” fish¬ 
ing for any of the “common fish” that 
Walton so lovingly wrote about, and so 
enthusiastically fished for. Yet, if this 
gentleman by accident hooks a good-sized 
channel cat on his spinner while fishing 
for bass (which happens everv now and 
then), does he throw it back? The an¬ 
swer is, confiding reader, that he does not. 
He may even forget himself so far as to 
exhibit it proudly to his friends, and be 
as elated over his catch as he of the bare 
feet and the cheek of tan. In any event, 
his respect for the gameness of the cat 
will be raised several hundred per cent, if 
he has never caught one before on bass 
tackle. For he will have water on his 
shirt, down his collar, in his hat, and in 
his eyes aplenty before he gets a reason¬ 
able sized cat of any persuasion into the 
boat and can safely claim the victory. 
T HE great Walton knew better than 
most of us that the purpose of recrea¬ 
tion was to get out of doors, and to 
get into touch -with nature. He also real¬ 
ized as few of us do, that it is not all of 
fishing to fish or even to catch fish. He 
despised no fish, not even the lowly eels: 
for even eels would take him out into the 
presence of nature and teach him some¬ 
thing of her mood. What more could he 
want to make complete happiness? We 
cannot do better than to learn this lesson 
from the dean of all anglers. 
His highness is a fish of all seasons. 
With the first warm wind out of the South 
in the spring you will find him hungry and 
on the job. With the coming of the spring 
floods you can go with a professional fish¬ 
erman to run his cat lines in the backwater, 
in the sloughs and submerged wagon roads, 
and in the paths through the woods. In 
the swift-flowing ditches that cut across 
bends in time of flood the cat is at home. 
A short line a dozen feet long stretched 
here will often nail a big one. With the 
subsiding of the floods his smaller cousins 
are in all the pond holes of the backwater, 
but the big royal catfish are the first fish 
of all to scent the fact that the waters of 
the rise are receding and to start for the 
main rivers. Net fishermen will tell you 
that they catch the big cats at the first in¬ 
dication of a fall in the water, and often 
before there is any indication discernible 
by man. The intelligence of the big river 
cats seems to be as high, perhaps higher, 
than that of any fish of the Middle West 
or South. It is a well-known fact that 
big cats are about the most difficult fish 
there is to catch. The fisherman will catch 
on hooks hundreds of little and medium¬ 
sized cats, but hardly ever a big one. The 
real big ones are generally caught in nets, 
though now and then one is taken on a 
hook. But I will venture the assertion 
that those caught on hooks will not aver¬ 
age five per cent, of the total caught above 
20 pounds. Is this not ample evidence of 
the subtle intelligence of the fish? 
