OUTDOORS: Literature has let catfish off the hook

RICHMOND - The fish-related literature is as vast and deep as an ocean, and yet, it occurred to me during a recent fishing trip on the James, somehow that august body of work, from Hemmingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," to W.B. Yeats' "The Fish," contains one glaring omission: the catfish.

The known world is downright lousy with catfish varieties - off the top of my head: blue, channel, flathead, white, black bullhead, yellow bullhead, wels and Mekong giant - but is nearly devoid of odes, tales, fables, fictions and the like.

Of the few out there, my favorite is the poem "Sermon of an Elder Catfish," by Miles Garett Watson. Not only does it nail what I imagine catfish life to be like, but it takes a shot at the hoity-toity trout, that subject of possibly 100 million overwritten fly-fishing memoirs.

I don't care what those heathen trout say:

The surface is not our home. Heaven

Isn't above us, the sun on our backs,

Rainbows bursting from our sides.

Heaven is deep, it's black and cold,

It's still. Heaven is everywhere

Everyone else is afraid to go.

Don't get me wrong, I love fly fishing, but I also love a day spent probing the murky depths for big cats. And considering the e-mails I get and the growing popularity of tournament catfishing, I know I'm not alone.

So why haven't these beasts found a following among fishermen who love literature? I'm no poet, but what about a haiku? The catfish seems like the perfect subject:

Blue pug of the deep

Far too ugly not to keep

Try some shad (and hook!)

I found myself mulling this topic Monday morning. I was out with Eddie Griggs and Martin Hardy, owners and proprietors of Virginia Elite Outdoors (vaeliteoutdoors.com), a Richmond-based fishing and hunting guide service. Griggs, a former pro bass fisherman, recently bought a pontoon boat and began taking clients on trips for blue cats in the James, hoping to profitably fill the months between the end of deer hunting season and the beginning of turkey season.

Most fish are hunkered down and hard to come by when the weather is as raw as it has been the past few months, but not the blue catfish. That's why I made it the February selection in my monthly "fish and fishery" series. The blue catfish - a native of the Mississippi River introduced into the James in the 1970s - is a welcome target for fisherman when the calendar suggests little else will bite.

Griggs and Hardy have been catfish guiding for just a few months, but they've already helped customers land blues up to 60 pounds. That's big, but they grow much bigger in the James. Last May, Tim Wilson and Danny Ayers of Rockbridge County boated a state-record 102-pound, 4-ounce whopper near Turkey Island.

Being a largemouth bass fisherman at heart, Griggs approaches blue cats the same way. It makes sense: Both fish are voracious predators.

We anchored just upstream of the Benjamin Harrison bridge near Hopewell on the edge of a dropoff. On one side of the boat, the water ran shallow toward a small island. On the other, it dropped off quickly to more than 20 feet. Hardy baited the hooks with cut gizzard shad, and Griggs cast lines in all directions.

The tide was on its way in, and immediately the lines on the slope down to deeper water showed the telltale signs. Tap. Tap. Tap. Boom!

The rod tip bent down hard. Griggs grabbed it out of its holder and handed it too me. The hook already was set, so I started reeling. Catfish are notoriously inconsistent fighters. I couldn't tell if I had a feisty 15-pounder on the line or a lazy 50-pounder.

It turned out to be a 15-pounder, and he was the start of a pattern. Only the rods with bait on the downslope to deeper water produced bites, and then only on the incoming tide. Once the tide turned, the bite vanished.

Still, it was a good morning. We caught close to 20 fish. All were on the small side by the standards of the mighty James, but they put up a good fight. Just as importantly, the day allowed for what all good catfishing days do: shooting the breeze.

Mostly we talked about places to go and methods for catching blue cats. It was then I was reminded of Watson's poem.

Heaven is deep, it's black and cold.

So it is for a catfish. And that's where we found them.