The Catfish
Remember how on animal documentaries the men would find a large animal, chase it down, capture it, talk about it for a second, and then turn it loose? Here we would see men capturing a grizzly bear with only a ball of twine and a bamboo pole. To a twelve-year-old boy, it seemed like all one had to do to subdue a wild beast was to jump on it and wrestle it to the ground. Well, something along those lines.
Remember how they would chase giraffes and antelopes with a truck using a long pole with a noose on the end? We tried that, well sort of. Chasing a dog or a small kid from the handlebars of a stingray bike was not easy. Certainly not as easy as they made it seem to be on television. These kinds of shows had their effect on us in many ways, and our attempts at capturing big game by hand were very limited until early in the summer of nineteen-sixty-four.
My half brother Donnie and I set out for a day of wandering; taking our bikes to the furthermost reaches of the road that ran along the St. Marks River in the "Big Bend" of North Florida. Where the road ended, we would continue on foot along the riverbank, looking for turtles, dead fish and driftwood that resembled something familiar. Most of the riverbank was thickly lined with marsh grass, but a few spots were accessible. Sometimes the bank was three or four feet above the waterline.
Standing on a four-foot rise, where the river had eroded the bank to produce a small cliff, we looked down into the dark tannic-stained water to see the biggest catfish we had ever laid eyes on. Here below our feet, lay a catfish that would easily weigh ten pounds. Our boyish calibrated eyes would have guessed it at fifty pounds. “Would you look at that?” I said. “I ain’t never seen a catfish that big!” Donnie and I looked at each other. Visions of big game captures raced across our thoughts. Almost in unison, we said, “Let’s catch it!”
To come up with a plan would mean we may have to have a little common sense, and avoiding that seemed like the story of our lives, so we stuck with what we knew, spur of the moment, unthinking, unbridled, unsafe action.
I told Donnie that if he would jump in and grab the fish, I’d stay on the bank. Being bigger, I would help pull it up the steep bank. Being much younger than I, and trusting my older judgment on these kinds of affairs, and without further hesitation, or thought, he flew off the cliff onto the back of the formidable fish.
Water and mud filled the air as Donnie landed feet first on the mighty fishes back. The fish arched its back under the force of Donnie’s mighty eighty pound frame. Now anyone who knows about catfish, knows that they have a very sharp spike on their dorsal fin, which is used for self-defense. The catfish’s fin stuck into Donnie’s leg.
Donnie screamed, mostly from freight. “What’s wrong?” I yelled, and Donnie yelled back, “It bit me!” The "bite" was from a sharp fin most likely, but it was enough to make us believe he was being attacked by a man-eating catfish. I grabbed a nearby limb and sailed in to save him.
As the fish lost vital fluids into the knee-deep water, I was smashing it on the head, trying to make it leave Donnie alone. The poor fish was simply trying to escape its tormentors, but to us, it was trying to eat Donnie.
Although mortally wounded, the catfish had a lot more stamina than we did, so as we were tiring, it finally escaped and swam downstream toward deeper water and safety from its would-be captors.
Donnie and I pulled ourselves to the riverbank. We found his wounds were minor. He was covered in blood, and his white shorts were stained red. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Well,” he continued breathlessly, “My leg hurts, but I’m okay.” He did have a few battle wounds, but was not hurt as badly as the giant fish, now fifty yards downstream, and thrashing wildly.
We were not easily deterred, and ran down the bank to where the fish was now floating on its side. “Jump in and get it!” I shouted. By this time Donnie was not as trusting of my ideas and quickly responded, “I ain’t getting back in there with that thing!” Not really blaming him, I leapt into the water after the quarry.
After considerable dragging, grunting and falling down, the fish was finally on the bank. With the most effort we could muster, we dragged the fish to where we had our bikes. We strapped the fish to Donnie’s bike with some wire we found next to the road and carted it home to show everyone, and hopefully, eat.
We took the long way to Shields Marina so we could show off our prize fish to everyone. At the marina the catfish was weighed. The monster weighed in at just over seven pounds. After examining the fish, Mr. Shields suggested it might have been sick. That would explain the reason it was in such shallow water. He also recommended we not eat it just in case it was sick. We decided to bury it at sea with full honors in the canal behind our house.
After I had time to think about it, we shouldn’t have killed the big fish. When I read Hemingway’s “Old Man and The Sea” I knew why. We should respect the natural wonders around us, but this was not a case of disrespect, but simply a case of two little boys not knowing better.
Today, though I fish often, I don’t kill anything that I’m not going to eat. We have all done something in our lives we may not be proud of, and killing the giant catfish was one of mine. We learn, as we grow older. Experiences like this teaches us valuable lessons. That is if we survive our childhood.
I still fish the St. Marks River. Every time I pass the spot where the mighty battle took place I can’t help but smile. The river holds many memories of times long past, but this was a special place. It was where two little boys created a memory that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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