BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 11:05 PM

Catfish have very sharp spines, so those gloves are necessary. If you go down to the Pike Street Market in Seattle you can buy catfish, and they'll offer to skin them for you before you leave. Take them up on their offer--they're professionals and catfish are hard to skin. I bought some to cook for a friend from North Carolina--but she grew up in the mountains and hadn't eaten catfish from down in the lowlands.

It is best when it is fried with bread crumbs or something that gives it that crisp outer crust. I wouldn't eat it very often, you get a lot of grease eating fish that way. But it does taste good. I still steer clear of hushpuppies, though. Never really cared for them.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 10:48 PM

The first fish I ever caught was a bullhead, also known as a catfish around these parts. It came out of the swampiest, most weed filled section of the pond, kinda like Jaws....all was quiet and calm and then this GIANT mouth emerged out of the water...ugliest damn thing (ok, ALMOST the ugliest) I've ever seen! I don't know what the difference is between a Mudcat and a regular old catfish (maybe I should read the entire thread and I might find out if I really cared...) but WOOOO baby, they are FUN to catch!!!!

LQF

**Couldn't bring myself to cook it, although I did bring it home in a bucket to (proudly) show my husband...makes great fertilizer for the garden though!

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: open mike
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 10:32 PM

musical entries to this thread:

many fish bite if you got the right bait,
here's a little tale (tail?) I would like to relate..

and oh, by the way, I am always on the look out
for any versions of the fiddle tune:
"Nail That Catfish To A Tree"

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 09:33 PM

Take your catfish (any kind!) and clean and skin it. Filet it and then lay the filets in a flat pan. Cover them with cheap beer and let it sit all day. Oil will rise from the beer and if you get too much oil pour it off and add more cheap beer. After the filets have marinated this way, pat them dry and cook as you would any good white fish.

You'll be amazed -- no "catfish" taste at all!

Of course, if like me you LIKE the taste of good catfish, you already know about breadin' 'em with corn meal and fryin' 'em in lard.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: GUEST,~~oO~~~
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 09:19 PM

Uploading photos for family members to click on and I.D. This is possibly a great+ aunt. Texas, 1920's or 30's. Look like cane poles on the car behind her and whiskers on the fish. Could be a mudcat in her hand, I guess. Photo's about 110 kb.

http://www2.moment.net/~michael/Fish1.JPG

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: frogprince
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:50 PM

Stilly R.S., I didn't say they looked like catfish; it's been so long that I couldn't give you a real description, but they had no bullhead or catfish characteristics; can't say now if they looked more like a trout or a pike or just what; they were about three-pounders. In other words, we never really knew wut they was. : )

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 03:34 PM

When I was 11 one of our neighbors caught so many he invited everybody on the block to his fish fry. I didn't like them but can't remember why. It may have been the inordinate amount of slime involved in cleaning them and the fact that he had to wear chain mail gloves to protect his hands. He used wire cutters to get the spikes off. The sound when they were cut was impressive.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 04:36 AM

A few (30?) years ago I saw some program on the tube about a guy who put dirt on his food as a condiment. His reasoning was that since so many foods got their nourishment from the dirt itself and the best parts of many were the skins (a potato for instance), then why not just go rightto the source.   This was during a big boom in the whole organic idea.

The dude covering the story was given a sample of a salad sprinkeled with dirt from the asshole's garden. He chewed for a moment then asked Ollie Organic, "What's the name of your cat?"

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 01:34 AM

I recall eating dirt when I was little... my loving sister fed me a spoonful of garden on a regular basis in exchange for not sitting on my head.

And people wonder why I say 19,000 miles is not far enough away from her.

The soil in our garden was quite fine but with a tendancy to chalkiness which stood me in good stead the first time I took an indigestion remedy. It was mild, with a slightly gritty texture, but a definate flavour to it.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 01:27 AM

I don't think most of us would eat dirt intentionally, but I think we all know it when we get a salad with lettuce or spinach that wasn't washed well enough, etc. Or when the tap water in some new place has that taste. You can probably also attribute other aspects of the taste and texture from the fish's habitat to that "muddy" taste.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 01:24 AM

Mud and earth have virtually no taste at all. I recall discovering that at quite a young age. They have plenty of texture, but hardly any taste.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: number 6
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 12:05 AM

""Muddy" tastes like dirt. That simple."

oh


ok


I've never eaten dirt.


thanks anyway for that explanation.


biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 11:51 PM

"Muddy" tastes like dirt. That simple.

North Texas Catfish Guide Service has a lot of information (not the best photos, though).

Frogprince, if you ate something that looked like a catfish but cooked up like slime then it was a bullhead. The Sheepshead looks a lot different than the catfish, and it looks like it is a good eating fish.

Best catfish I ever ate was at a little restaurant a friend took me to in Elvis' home town of Tupelo, Mississippi. A lot of the restaurant and market fish is pond raised.

In doing a search it looks like "Yellow Cat" under the strobe of Google brings up that--yellow felines. :) Yellow Catfish as a search brings up a lot of bullheads, some of them labled "yellow bullhead catfish." Kind of backs up my earlier statement (I grew up catching and tossing back bullheads in the Puget Sound area in fresh and salt water. They seem to be everywhere). I think the yellow cats are the ones that get to be the leviathans of local lake legend here in Texas. The scuba divers in the lakes will see them near the dams. I worked as a park naturalist for the Corps of Engineers at Belton and Stillhouse Hollow Lakes in Central Texas many years ago and heard about them. (The real fish stories I have are of the huge alligator gars that came out of the bayous and lakes where I worked for the Corps in the Vicksburg District in Northeastern Louisiana).

Blue cats look a lot more tasty.

Here is a fisheries photo of a carp, a blue cat and a channel cat. That might help a little.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: number 6
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 11:25 PM

This is the first time I have heard of something "tasting muddy".

Can someone please describe to me what the hell "muddy" tastes like?

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: fumblefingers
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 10:49 PM

I've caught and eaten most varieties of catfish in these parts--North Texas/Southern Oklahoma. Channel and Blue cat are preferred by most folks for eating. Mudcat, flatheat, and yellow catfish tend to taste muddy.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 10:40 PM

Surely somebody is posting here and pretending to be Spaw. that doesn't sound like spaw at all. And who's Wayne?
----------------
John in Kansas. I think the mudcat was invented by the same people who gave us the chicken hawk, a bird not to be found in any bird book.


Her husband comes to see her dressed in ragged clothes
with a runny nose and fifth a wine
and a bucket full of bullheads he had caught that day
on Monona bay with a hand-held line...

the Berrymans, or should I say Berrymen? "Vegetables"

Evidently it is particularly opprobrious to use a hand-held line.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 10:32 PM

I love catfish, and have eaten a ton (or nearly) in my life. Don't know if they was muddy or not. Not when I ate them, anyway.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 09:24 PM

Catfish is excellent eating. Contrary to anything said here, the flesh of most catfish is firm and white and tastes nothing like mud. It has a moderately strong flavor but certainly a pleasant one which does belie its bottom feeder status. Wayne manages a couple of 2 foot plus cats every year we camp and those are prime nights of campfire eating. Properly prepared there are almost no bones encountered and lightly breaded, fried in butter.....hard to beat!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 09:21 PM

There are lots of different kinds of catfish, and local traditions apply the name "mudcat" to quite a few of them. In some regions, only the madtom kinds are called mudcats, and they're generally not considered good eating.

In my area, some people call a variety of small "pond cats" a mudcat, although the more popular name for them is a bullhead.

The mudcat name is also applied by a few here to flatheads, but those few are all idiots who should have their fishing licenses revoked.

We've had previous arguments discussions of whether or not there is a specific variety for which "mudcat" is favored by the officious fishfaculty at learned institutions; but I'm not sure there was ever really a conclusion to the research conducted here.

The flathead, blue, and channel catfish are the big 'uns in Kansas, although blues are extremely rare now. (A speculative statement by Fish and Game folk, who admit that even they have a hard time telling them apart sometimes, expecially when they reach respectable size.)

Both blues and channel cats need free-flowing water to spawn successfully. The channels seem to be able to breed successfully in our mud-bottom creeks and lakes, but the blues were more successful when they could go upstream to find rock (or at least clean sand) bottoms to spawn. Dams and dried up streams have cut the blues off from good spawning grounds, making them scarce here.

The "bullheads" are a pond fish, usually found in fairly shallow water, and seldom exceeding a couple of pounds; but they're a great sport fish, since a 2 pound bullhead fights like a 20 pound channel cat - for a little while. (I have caught both, bullheads up to about 2 pounds and one channel a little over 30 - from the same lake.)

Unless the water is extremely polluted, I've never encountered a catfish of any kind that wasn't reasonably tasty; but we don't have the stonecats and madtoms around here; and I do have my doubts that I'd try to eat some of them - knowingly. Some of them are ugly with a CAPITAL UGH, and a few are reported to be "mildly venomous."

John

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 09:19 PM

I don't care for seal, myself. I first ate seal in Makkovik, Labrador. I last ate seal in Makkovik, Labrador. My lips are sealed to seal.

Unless Sir Paul says he coming for lunch. Then, definitely seal flipper pie.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: number 6
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:45 PM

LOL !!

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:44 PM

My lips are sealed.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: number 6
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:38 PM

Cat fish and grits .... enlightened with Louisiana Hot sauce.

One of the best meals I have ever eaten ... at Calloways Catfish And Seafood, Vicksburgh Mississippi.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: GUEST,~~~Oo~~~
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:20 PM

You know, yellowcats may be the same as mudcats. Been a while since I've done that. Lots of big fish heads nailed to posts in San Saba county the last time I drove through there.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: GUEST,~~~Oo~~~
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:18 PM

Used to catch them on trot-lines in west-central TX when I was a kid. Mostly on the Medina River. Pigs liver was the best bait. Strong aroma the fish could locate at night. We caught channel cats, yellow cats and mudcats. Mudcats tasted okay. Fry anything long enough and it'll taste...fried.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:12 PM

Caught lots of mudcats. Eaten lots of 'em too. They're okay, but channel cats taste better.

(I'm too tired to pick up the glaring double entendré in the thread title and run with it right now.)

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: retrancer
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 08:11 PM

yah a mudcat and yellowcat are the same i think blues and channels are deeper water and more running water and closer to the sea catfish. i skinned mine by nailing them to fence posts which is a rural tradition here in tx - you get a nice cat and nail it out by the road to skin it so the head satys as a trophy.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 07:21 PM

Here's one way to catch 'em - noodling for catfish

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Severn
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 07:11 PM

We always ate the channel cats from the Potomac. My dad had a board with a nail on it and he'd skin them. He said the Mudcats or "Yellow Cats" (squatter in shape, and with a flat tail rather than a forked one) were no good to eat and, he always threw them back, so I've never eaten one that I've caught.

I don't know what kind they use for the farm bred catfish I've bought commercially or have eaten in restaurants. Does anyone out there know?

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: kendall
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 07:08 PM

I tried catfish a couple of times in Florida but they tasted like mud to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: frogprince
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 07:04 PM

As a fisherman, I barely know a mudcat from a siamese. I have had very good catfish to eat a few times, whatever the exact variety. 50 years ago my father, a hired hand, and I each caught one of a fish variety we found jumping a lot in a Mississippi river backwater. Cooked the things up, and they had a consistency about like mucus. Eeeewwwww. Later someone told us it sounded like they were what he called "sheepshead".

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 06:55 PM

I've had locally caught catfish in Kansas...kinda tasty. Never actually caught one.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Jeri
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 06:14 PM

Not yet, Spaw. I don't think people take me seriously.

I don't actually know the differences between catfish. I ate some kind of blackened catfish when I was in Louisianna, but I was concentrating on the main point of that meal. We got a big old vat of crawdads. I'd never eaten the buggers before and I was up to my elbows. I remember the fish had a lot of bones, but it was good.

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 06:14 PM

Welcome to Mudcat, jstarwolf. You've just met a couple of our resident irreverents. Hang in there!

'~ |

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 06:13 PM

I caught Mudcat Fever- does that count?

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 06:08 PM

One of my cats is not the brightest candle on teh birthday cake - she will stand out in the rain crying, and if I try to approach her to pick her up, she runs away. She has been known to fall in the mud...

Subject: RE: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 05:31 PM

Well, let's see............Jack the Sailor caught Carol (or vice versa) and they got married. And Jeri is always suggesting that I (and numerous others) bite her. I dunno' if anyone has taken her up on it at this point. I am available for you or anyone to kiss my ass of course............


Spaw

Subject: BS: Who Here Has Eaten or Caught a Mudcat?
From: retrancer
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 05:05 PM

Actually learned the diff cats from my Mississippi wife - the mudcat as opposed to the channel or blue cat. I've pulled a few mudcats out of central texas waters.