My mother liked to fish--she'd go down to the creek when she had time and use a cane pole and worms dug out of the yard and catch perch or bream. She'd fry them up and she and daddy enjoyed them--the flesh of these small fish is sweet and fresh and delicious but full of bones.

You could spend a long time picking out the bones to get a teeny bit of fish. Forget that--it was too tedious for me, and after getting a bone stuck in my mouth, those fish were off my to-eat list.

Years after I left home, daddy had a large fish pond dug at their house that had a brook draining into it. It's common for people down here to have fish ponds on their property. They stocked their mini lake with trout and catfish. I never saw daddy fishing, but mama liked to sit on the pier and fish.

They bought commercial fish food, dry pellets in a bag, and almost every day the grandkids would throw out a few handfuls into the water. The fish would come to the surface to gulp the pellets, slap the water with their tails and roil up the water. The catfish sometimes had an earthy taste, like the muddy bottom the trolled. I like that taste, though the modern catfish farms produce fish without that taste.

Catfish don't have scales, they have a slick skin that has to be peeled off before cooking and they have barbels that resemble cat whiskers, thus their name. They don't have tiny bones, just a spine with large bones that make it easy to discard them.
They are delicious, dredged in cornmeal and salt and deep fried, served with sweet coleslaw and hushpuppies and a big glass of tea.

Okay I'm craving catish, thus this blog. A Mississippi woman has gotta have 'em once in a while!

susil