Catfish. What else do you need to say?

I guess you could say a lot more actually. Something about the stench. Something about the bugs that cover every inch of your body when you're on the river until 2 a.m. Something about the one that got away. And something about all the good memories you and gramps had.

Catfish. Fishing on the bottom just happens at a different pace, even if it is those flat-headed felines you're after.

It's certainly not flyfishing--scouring every hole with a nymph or landing a dry over a bread-line of browns; of course it's not bass fishing, which feels a lot like rock and role; and it's obviously nothing like ice fishing, which these days seems like you need to bring a computer science major along to understand all of the electronics.

It's just three-way-swiveled rigs and heavy-actioned rods and three-day-old-chicken liver and some comfy chairs. That is, until that big whiskered channel chum decides he's hungry. Then the pace always seems to change a bit.


And for all that easy-chair fishing, it's funny how not much is ever said as the sun drops down behind the mountain and the bull-frogs start with their heckling and the mesquitos start with their torturing. Because waiting into the wee hours of the night for that pole tip to bend next to some good ole' fishing buddies says it all.