The Cumberland Catfish As told by Robert Wolfender

The Cumberland Catfish As told by Robert Wolfender

In their book “Folklore from the Working Folk of America” (1973), authors T.P. Coffin and Henig Cohen share a catfish tale given to them by Robert Wolfender of Etowah, Tennessee.

 The year was 1945. Wolfender has just finished catfishing on the Cumberland River, and as he carries the single fish he has caught that day—a 4-pounder—up the trail, he bumps into an older angler heading for the river. The old fisherman speaks.

“That’s a pretty small fish to what they used to be,” he says.

Wishing to be sociable, Wolfender asks him what is the largest fish he has ever seen taken from the Cumberland River. The old man smiled, spit a mouth full of tobacco juice into the river and began:

“Back when there war steamboats on the Cumberland, there was an old catfish that war suppose’ to be a whopper. He broke trotlines and jerked cane poles right out of people’s hands. There was one young buck that tried to grapple him by tyin’ a rope through his gills, but that old cat carried him a mile down the river ‘fore he could let loose of him. Yes sir, that fish was the granddaddy of them all.

“Wal, finally my pappy forged a hook out of an old broken plowshare, then he tied it to a two-inch Manila line and hitched the old mule to the other end. Then he cut a ham in two and used half of it for bait. It took pappy two days ‘fore he hooked that old cat, but when he did, it shore was a sight. Finally, between pappy and the old mule, they drug that old cat out of the water, and it was said the river went down one inch.

“Wal, pappy just looked at that big old fish laying there on the bank dyin’, and he looked plum sad instead of glad. In a minute, without sayin’ a word, he takes his pocket knife and cuts that line, and he tells me to help him push that old cat back into the river. I was surprised but I know better than to talk back to my pappy, so we pushed that big old fish back into the river.

“Pappy set down a spell then and lit his pipe. I reckon it was an hour before he spoke. When he did, he said, ‘Boy that was the last of the big ones, that was the granddaddy of them all.’ Then he said sort of quietlike, ‘A man ain’t got no right to kill somethin’ as big and brave as that there old catfish.’ Wal, from then on, fishin’ just wasn’t the same for me.”