Hook, line, and sinker
Before you do anything else, go watch the new trailer for Superman Returns, just released yesterday. I haven’t been this excited about a movie since Forrest Gump came out in 1994.
My whole life, I’ve only liked two comic book superheroes: Spiderman and Superman. In recent years, Sam Raimi has done Spiderman justice; I hope Bryan Singer can do Superman as well. Christopher Reeve left some mighty big tights to fill. Judging from the trailer, Kevin Spacey has done a bang-up job in Gene Hackman’s role as Lex Luthor.
Please God, don’t let this movie suck.
And before you start asking in the comments: I post only when I think I have something worth posting. I haven’t had anything to say for the last month. Today I do.
“This, and two bags of ice,” I said to the young woman behind the counter as I set a bottle of water down. She shifted the telephone in her hand from one ear to the other. “Oh, and a whole tube of crickets.”
“I’m on hold with the bank,” she said. “They sent my new checks to the wrong house.”
I marvelled at how people in the country — for I was out in the tiny nearby town of Valhermosa Springs — were so willing to divulge unsolicited information to complete strangers who walked in off the street.
“Is that who sent me those new checks?” my friend Rodney asked, grinning. “I’ve already written three.”
“You won’t get far with ‘em,” the woman said. “We don’t have hardly any money at all. And after this, I think I may close the account. Y’all going fishing?”
I nodded. A mutual friend of Rodney and I, Tim, owns a goodly chunk of land out in Valhermosa Springs. His family raises cattle and as such, they have several ponds (seven or nine, I forget which) sprinkled around the property to provide water for the cows. A few years ago, Tim stocked a couple of the ponds with bass, bream, and catfish.
And now the ponds are overstocked, so Rodney and I had invites to come fishing. Monday after work we loaded our gear into my [redacted] and headed south across the river.
I grew up fishing, and loved it. As the years passed, I did it less and less, though. The last time I went, two or three years ago, I caught squat (but did get peed on by a turtle so the whole trip wasn’t lost) and pretty much didn’t have any fun at all. Hearing about the catfish in these ponds got me excited to fish again, because we love us some catfish at casa Fred.
“Yeah, we are,” I said.
She walked around the counter and led us outside to the cricket box. After much discussion by Rodney and the woman over why the crickets didn’t jump out of the box when she raised the lid, she filled a tube and dumped it into my cricket, um, thingy. We went inside and Rodney paid, pointing out that I’d already paid because of the gas it took to drive there.
Fishing in a stocked pond ROCKS. I wish I’d taken the time to restring all my rods first, though. I lost four fish to broken line because it was so old. Fortunately, I’d restrung my ultralight in anticipation, so it held up. Nothing beats landing 5-7 pound catfish with a rod and reel designed for 1-2 pound fish.
We fished for about three hours and ended up with fourteen catfish between us. On the way back to the office, where we were going to clean them, Rodney told me about his catfish cleaning technique.
“First, I cut through the skin down the side, then along the bottom and top. Then I hang the fish on a hook and use pliers to peel the skin off.”
“You don’t filet them?” I asked.
“Sure, I have filets when I’m done. I split them and take the guts out, then cut away the meat into filets. It takes me about an hour to do six.”
“An hour to do six? I think you’ll like the way I filet them.”
Back at the office, it took me about 20 minutes to filet all fourteen catfish. No guts, no peeling, just slicing and dicing with an electric knife and we ended up with two big-ass stacks of catfish meat, just like you get at the grocery store.
Goddamn, fishing was fun.
We ended up using three crickets out of about 100, and caught two bream. All the catfish were caught with raw chicken livers.
It is simply beautiful out in the country. I’m ready to move there.
This sign tickled me.
The cows slowly moved over to see what we were doing at their watering hole.
One of fourteen victims.
Rodney shows off one of his catches.
Tim showed up around 5:30 and the cows lost their minds to come be near him.
Their antics–particularly the sniffing of everything–reminded me of a certain gaggle
of cats. They left big streaks of cow spit all over my vehicle from checking it out.
Another catfish, waiting to go into the cooler. That’s the end of my size-12 foot, for size reference.
A cooler full of good eats.
I show Rodney the easy way to filet a fish. He’s cleaning off any little bits of rib I left on.
Think of this as just one more thing you didn’t know about me. I have the mad fish chopping skills.
Warning: the above picture is graphic and may not be suitable for the squeamish.
Twenty minutes of slicing and one finger blister later, we have maybe
15 pounds of fine-ass catfish filets. When I finished with the fileting, Rodney said,
“I’d still be on the second or third one!”
I can’t wait to go again.
Looks delicious, Fred! I imagine Rodney’s catfish skinning technique is similar to frog cleaning. No, it’s not very fast.
I don’t know if the Superman trailer came out in Europe first or what, but I saw it at the computer store (yes, I overpay for computer equipment offline when needs must) a few weeks ago. It was on one of the monster Apple screens, running off a Mac, so maybe it was a Mac promotion (perhaps a Disney/Pixar tie-in?). It gave me chills, and I’m really not into movies or comics.
That country is indeed beautiful. I hope to retire (young) to someplace exactly like it.
Yummmmmmm. Catfish. You use cornmeal breading on them? Whatever, I’m heading over to Casa del Fred for dinner tonight! Thems were surely some big-ass fish!!
Catfish at casa Fred get cajun spiced up courtesy of Chef Paul Prudhomme, then put on the G. Foreman grill for 3 minutes. Perfection!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm catfish!
Hi, Fred. How do you get the skin off? It is so hard to do, we always used the pliers, too. Did you use the electric knife? Do tell!
Retha:
Go look here, it has pictures of the whole fileting process. There’s no peeling at all — the skin is left behind. Note on that page that the fileting section is the top part. The bottom is for people who want to peel their fish and leave the bones in.
Those are very nice pictures Fred. Really clear. Do you use a skylight filter on your lens or do you fix any haziness with a photo editor?
Martin - I just use the camera as it came out of the box. Some of the pictures up there are actually a tiny bit blurry, but resizing them down makes them look better.
Plus — and here’s my big secret to getting really good ones — I take about eleventy billion pictures when I’m shooting, then pick the best ones. Even someone who knows next to nothing about his camera (like me) can take good ones when he takes that many.
We would take the big boat out in the Champlain Canal around dusk and throw some wet dog food in a knee high to chum the water a little bit. We would then use chicken livers that had been sitting in the sun for a few hours as bait. Imagine the fun!
So who manufactures “redacted”? Buick? Heh.
So, what, the extra crickets are going to be a side dish?
Thanks for the link!
Debbie - we let the crickets go in the field (except for the handful I threw out into the water to watch them get eaten). They can play music for the cows at night.
Can you believe that a couple of booksellers are selling your book on Amazon for close to FIFTY dollars? How awesome is that?
What kind of camera do you have? You probably wrote about it when you got it, but I wasn’t looking for a camera then and didn’t pay attention. Thanks.
Hey Fred, that filet technique works great on perch, trout and whitefish too. My Grandfather taught me after we caught a bucket of freshwater perch on Lake Huron. He had the whole mess cut in less than an hour with just a regular knife.
Not being a from the southern USA. . . or, come to think of it, a fisherperson. . . when you told the clerk that you wanted a tube of crickets, I thought you were making up a nonsensical thing to see if she was paying any attention to her customer while making a personal phone call! Hee, guess not!