The Catfish are Calling

SPREADING WING - If you are a Kindle person, you can join the Kindle Lending Library program, with a yearly fee, then you have access to thousands of books you can read for free. Of course, most of you  Kindle people are computer savvy enough that you already know that, but it took me a long time to figure it all out. Spreading Wing is in that program. I'm an old man. I'm much more concerned with getting Spreading Wing into the hands of a lot of people, giving it a good start, than I am about making money. Writing, really, seems to me to be something one does for the love of writing. At least, it seems that way to me. Have you seen a lot of ads on this blog? Spreading Wing, full of my stories, is all I promote here.
     One's legacy is important. I already have three offspring carrying the name Pat. What better legacy can a man leave than that? If I was a total, no good, sap-sucking bum, would Barbara allow her only son to carry my name? Would  my children name their children after me? I can catch a lot of catfish, but that's a pretty questionable legacy, unless The Great Depression comes back. I want my stories to be my legacy, too. What Barbara and I, and the generations around us, do will be alive as long as my stories are read. If my stories are not interesting, and fun to read, they will die with me. To me, it's very important that each generation's stories be passed on down. Good stories.
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BUY SPREADING WING ON amazon.com  OR  AMAZON EUROPE - BOOK 16.95 OR KINDLE - 6.99.  442 pages of true stories.  Read the first two chapters and more on Amazon Kindle free.

The Catfish are calling

Pardon me for interrupting my series of posts about our year's travel. I'll get back to it in four days.
Hope you enjoy reading.

     Every year about this time, I get this restless feeling. It seems about the only way to get over that is to get in my aging, 14 foot flatbottom boat, (bought it 40 years ago, used, for $70.) fire up the old 5 horse motor, and hit the river. Well, I caught up a batch of bait, (crawdads) a few days ago, and I was ready. But the River was  not. Too high and fast. So, I headed to the lake yesterday. I'm not your typical fisherman you see on most lakes. I don't fish for bass. Most fishermen I see there set in that boat all day and cast, and cast, and cast, and if they get one or two, they're happy. I'm a meat fisherman. I guess that goes back to the post depression days I grew up in, when we really badly needed the meat. As I've told you, we ate only salt pork meat, an occasional chicken, and what we got from the forest and the river.


     I started out as a small boy bringing in "mud cats." They don't get very big. When I was large enough to walk to, or actually, I walked/ran to the river, two miles away, I sometimes brought in a mess of  channel, blue, or flathead cats. They get much larger.
     In the early years of our marriage, my catfishing days were in full swing. It was the single largest point of contention between Barbara and I. On a regular basis, I was on the river all night, running my lines every three hours. The need for the meat was lessening, and I was having more and more trouble justifying all that time, effort, killing all that bait, as well as justifying it to Barbara, especially since it took so much of the time away from family that we had started, that I just quit after awhile.


     During those early years I caught a lot of catfish. I got very good at dressing a catfish. The most I caught in one night was 78, down near the Mississippi river where there is no legal limit. The fastest I have dressed a catfish is 17 seconds. I slept under a poncho on the river bank when it rained all night.three times.


     When our children were grown, I began to miss catfishing more and more. I finally made a deal with my soul. If I was not going to eat it, or use it for bait, I didn't kill it. and like the Indians, I usually thank the fish for giving it's life for my food before dressing it. It's not hard to find needy people when it comes to a mess of catfish to eat, or a church fish fry. I have not yet caught the big one, three 25 pounders about tops it out, though I have struggled with one or two in the last few years, once for three hours in the rain, never landed them, that were much larger. They get big. One of my ancestors reports seeing 300 pound catfish on the ferry crossing the Mississippi river, back in 1858. I know that 40 pound cat is out there, waiting for me, somewhere beyond that next bend in the river.


     Anyway, let me get back to my trip today. I planned to catch a batch of small bream for bait, but when I got to the Lake, I found they were not really biting yet, too early. Water's still too cold. Well, I had a batch of crawdads and a couple of boxes of chicken liver, so I just made do, and set out my lines. I seldom spend the night on the water anymore


     30 minutes before daylight, I headed out. Halfway to the lake (twenty miles or so) I heard a noise behind my car. I stopped and discovered the nut had come off the ball that my trailer hooks onto, and my trailer was dragging by a safety chain. I managed to tie the trailer and the car back together with a piece of trotline string and some bailing wire.  Didn't look real good, but it got me there and back, with the help of my flashers and about 20 MPH. Seems the catfish found the water still too cold yet to stir much, most of my baits were still on. But I did catch 6 catfish, averaging about 3 pounds, enough for about six meals for Barbara and I,  the largest being about 7 pounds. But I had fun, and I know things will pick up as the water gets warmer.