I grew up thinking catfish were garbage fish.
You know the type. Bottom feeders. Mud suckers. The thing you catch by accident when you’re actually after bass and then throw back with a sneer. That was me for about thirty years. I’d hook a channel cat on a crankbait and groan like I’d just stepped in something. My dad fished for walleye and crappie. His dad fished for walleye and crappie. So obviously catfish were for people who didn’t know any better. I inherited the prejudice without ever questioning it.
Then my cousin Dale showed up.
Dale is not a subtle man. He’s got a gut like a propane tank, a laugh that sounds like a donkey falling down stairs, and opinions he delivers like they’re stone tablets from a mountain. He pulled into my driveway one June afternoon with a beat-up jon boat on a trailer that was held together with duct tape and prayer. Two five-gallon buckets in the back. Chicken livers. A couple of old Zebco rod-and-reel combos that looked like they’d been stored at the bottom of a lake.
“We’re going catfishing,” he said. Not asked. Said.
I laughed. I actually laughed. “Dale, I’ve got a tournament-grade baitcaster and a box full of soft plastics. I don’t do catfish.”
Dale looked at me the way you look at a kid who just told you the moon is made of cheese. “Alright, Mr. Bassmaster. You come along and show me how it’s done then.”
I should have known that grin meant trouble.
The Setup
We put in at a slow bend of the Big Muddy River around five in the afternoon. Dale motored us out to a deep hole he said he’d “been working on,” which meant he’d been dumping soured grain there every few days for a month. Illegal in some states, not in ours, and honestly I wasn’t about to argue with a man who had chicken liver juice running down his forearm.
His rig was gloriously stupid: a 2-ounce egg sinker above a barrel swivel, about two feet of leader, and a 5/0 circle hook loaded with a glob of chicken liver wrapped in pantyhose. He offered me one.
“Pantyhose?” I said.
“Keeps it on the hook. You’d know that if you weren’t such a snob.”
I took the rod. We cast out into the deep water, set the rods in holders he’d bolted directly into his boat seats — rust and all — and cracked a couple of beers. The sun was starting to drop. Bugs were out. I’ll admit, it was nice. Quiet. The kind of fishing where you’re not working a lure, not thinking about retrieval angle, not performing for the fish. Just sitting there, waiting for a bite.
Nothing happened for about an hour. Dale didn’t care. He told me about a guy he knew who caught a flathead that weighed 52 pounds out of this river back in ’94. “Had to use a gaff to get it in the boat,” he said. “Gaff slipped. Fish took off with a chunk of its own jaw. They found it floating three days later, still alive.”
I’m pretty sure he was lying. I’m also pretty sure he didn’t care whether I believed him.
The First Hit
Around seven, my rod tip started bouncing. Not a real take — just little taps. Tap tap tap. Stop. Tap tap.
“He’s playing with it,” Dale said. “Don’t set the hook.”
But I’m a bass fisherman. Thirty years of muscle memory kicked in and I yanked that rod like I was setting a jig on a five-pounder. Felt the weight for half a second — then nothing. Line went slack.
Dale just looked at me. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to.
“Circle hooks,” he finally said, chewing the words out slow like he was explaining something to a golden retriever. “You don’t set ’em. The fish hooks itself. You just reel.”
I knew this, theoretically. I’d read about circle hooks. I’d even used them surf fishing once. But when your brain has three decades of “SET THE HOOK” drilled into it, the body does what the body does. I felt like an idiot. And I was an idiot.
Dale rebaited my hook. Chucked it back out. “Try again, Professor.”
The One That Didn’t Get Away
Twenty minutes later, Dale’s rod bent double. No tapping this time — the rod tip just slammed down and the drag started screaming. My cousin grabbed it, let the fish run, and I swear to God he didn’t even stand up.
“Get the net,” he said.
I scrambled around the boat like a man who’d never seen a net before. Knocked over my beer. Stepped on his tackle box. Dale just shook his head.
Five minutes of fighting later — and this thing was fighting, pulling drag like a small truck — he brought it to the surface. Blue cat. Not the 52-pounder from his story, but solid. Maybe twelve, thirteen pounds. Its back was slate gray, its belly pale, whiskers longer than my fingers. Ugly in the most beautiful way possible.
I finally got the net under it and hauled it over the gunwale. Dale unhooked it with a pair of pliers, held it up for a second, then dropped it in the cooler without a word. He was acting like this was Tuesday, but I could see the corner of his mouth twitching.
My Turn
About half an hour before dark, my rod did the same thing — bent hard, drag singing. This time I fought every instinct and just started reeling. Didn’t yank. Didn’t set. Just put the rod tip up and wound the handle.
The fish came in easier than Dale’s. Channel cat, maybe six or seven pounds, but it put up a solid fight. When I got it to the boat, I could see the circle hook lodged perfectly in the corner of its mouth, exactly like it was supposed to be. I’d never landed a catfish on purpose before. Not once. Thirty-something years of fishing and this was genuinely a first.
Dale nodded. “Look at that. The professor can learn.”
We caught two more before dark — another channel and a smaller flathead that Dale insisted was the best eating fish in the river. I’d never eaten flathead either, because, you know, catfish are garbage fish. I’d just assumed that my entire life without ever putting one in a skillet.
The Frying Pan Confession
We cleaned them at the ramp under a floodlight. Dale had a fillet knife that looked like it had been sharpened on a sidewalk but somehow still worked. He cut the fillets off the ribs, trimmed the red meat, and handed me a bag of clean white slabs.
That night we fried them in cornmeal with salt and pepper. Simple. Nothing fancy. The flathead fillets were thick and flaky, almost like grouper. The channels were milder, but still good — firm, clean-tasting, not a trace of mud. I ate four fillets standing up at the kitchen counter before I even grabbed a plate.
“It’s not garbage, is it,” Dale said. Not a question.
“No,” I said, mouth full. “It’s not.”
That was the moment I realized I’d spent three decades being wrong about something I’d never actually tried. I’d caught catfish by accident and thrown them back without ever eating one. I’d heard “bottom feeder” and “muddy taste” from guys who probably heard it from their dads who heard it from their dads — a chain of ignorance stretching back generations, each link passing on a verdict they never bothered to test.
I was one of those links. And I was wrong.
What I Actually Learned
It wasn’t really about the catfish.
It was about the fact that I’d been fishing for thirty years and never once asked myself why I looked down on a species I’d never targeted. I’d absorbed somebody else’s opinion and worn it like it was my own. The whole “catfish are trash” thing wasn’t my thought — it was an inheritance, passed down through my family like a bad recipe nobody wanted to admit was bad.
Same thing happens with hunting, with gear, with technique. “We’ve always done it this way.” “That brand is junk.” “You need at least X magnification for Y distance.” Half the time, the person saying it has never tested the alternative. They’re just repeating something they heard at a deer camp in 2003.
I’m not saying tradition is worthless. Dale’s rig — egg sinker, swivel, circle hook, chicken liver in pantyhose — was exactly what his grandpa used. But Dale had also tested it. He knew why every component was there because he’d tried other things and they didn’t work as well. That’s different. That’s earned knowledge, not borrowed prejudice.
The borrowed stuff is the problem. The stuff you believe because someone told you to. The “of course” opinions you’ve never examined.
I’ve been trying to catch myself doing it ever since. Hunting whitetails — am I avoiding that ridge because I’ve actually scouted it, or because someone told me it’s dead ground? Shooting positions — am I bad at kneeling shots because I’ve practiced them and they’re hard, or because someone said they’re useless and I believed them? Every time I think “that’s just how it is,” I stop and ask myself if I actually know, or if I’m just repeating.
Most of the time, I’m just repeating.
Anyway. I bought my own circle hooks a week later. Got a bucket of chicken livers and a pack of pantyhose from Walmart — the checkout lady gave me a look, but I’m past the point of caring what people think at Walmart. Found my own hole on the river. Dumped some soured grain. Waited.
Third night out, I caught a 15-pound flathead on my own, no Dale in the boat. Fried him up the same way Dale did. It was maybe the best fish I’ve ever cooked.
I sent Dale a picture. He responded with exactly two words:
“Trash fish.”