Fish Tale

We were all going fishing! Katie, Johnnie, and Aunt Ellie had come to spend the night. Before daybreak the next morning, carrying a picnic lunch, we all headed for the deepest part of Cuthand Creek, where the biggest, laziest catfish lay in the deep water, under the tall trees, waiting for foolish little water critters to drift by. Luck was with us that day as we pulled in fish after fish; catfish, white perch, blue gill. We’d have enough to invite the neighbors in for a fish fry, a rare treat! They were still biting, when we finally ran out of worms, though, of course, we’d dug far more than we ever expected to need that day. It was painful to give it up when things were going so well. On a lark, Katie peeled a piece of papery bark off a sycamore tree and worked it onto her hook, laughing, “If they’re so greedy, maybe they’ll bite this!” Sure enough, almost as soon as her woody bait hit the water, it sunk. Thinking it had hung up on an underwater branch, she gave it a jerk. Lo and behold, it moved. “I gotta bite.! I gotta bite! It’s a big ‘un! Uncle Roscoe, Help!”

“Gee Whiz, Katie! You got a whale there!” Daddy struggled with the big catfish several minutes, till he finally exhausted it enough to manhandle it to the bank.  It was the biggest catfish one any of us had ever seen! When he got it to the cotton scales later that day, it weighed twenty-eight pounds, an amazing catch and an incredible fish tale.