Catfished

 5/30/25

I (Oliver) have been getting a little tired of venison every meal and we don’t have ready access to a grocery store here so Opal and I agreed to do a little fishing this afternoon to give ourselves a chance to catch a fish for dinner. The area around our housing is cut grass and then mangroves and then sea, except for one gap in the mangroves twenty or so feet wide where you can access the water directly. At the time we went out the tide was high and falling which meant there was a bunch of floating seagrass that stretched four or five feet into the water. As soon as we started fishing I got a bite and reeled the fish in as far as the grass but once it got tangled and bogged down it broke my line. Opal bravely went in after it and retrieved what looked like a football sized clump of weeds but revealed itself to be a catfish. The catfish down here aren’t big and tasty like Missouri catfish. They are more known as a nuisance that take your bait before anything desirable can get to it. We were only catching catfish. Every time we hooked something we would get excited only to inevitably bring a catfish. I started saying “you got catfished!” every time it happened. Eventually it got late and we were on our last frozen shrimp and Opal caught a slightly bigger catfish. This one we decided to keep, although I don’t hear about people eating them here how different could it be? We wrapped up and got two very (very) small fillets which we had with broccoli and rice. The verdict is although Florida catfish don’t taste anything like Missouri, if you put enough butter on anything it tastes pretty darn good. 

Opal-

A few more things. After catching a few catfish I actually caught a crab. Now you would think that I would have enough sense not to get grabbed by crab claws but unfortunately in that moment I did not and now have the scars to prove it. Oliver also caught a small mangrove snapper. To make it look bigger he held up his hand far behind the fish and we lined up the photo just right. Because what else are you supposed to do when you catch a small fish. The carcass of the filled catfish was put on a heavy duty rod and wire leader. It sat on the shore during dinner in a rod holder and when we came to pick it back up something had bent the metal leader and ripped the hook and carcass clean off. Who knows what it was but big creatures swim in these waters.