Floating the river

[Greg_Cornish]

The rivers have been so high in the Midwest this year, no-one has fished. They finally came down this week to navigable. A bunch of brothers and relatives commandeered a 20 ft canoe and set off floating the Blue Earth River, the river I grew up on.

They caught dinner.

[kraz88]

Man I would like to bring home a stringer full like that. Those tiny cats can be mighty tasty too. yum. 

[Greg_Cornish]

I grew up on those as a kid. My dad was a share cropper and raised nine kids on $4000 a year. We ate everything from 2 to 8 pound cats to 6 inch bullheads. One of the most painful things I've ever experienced I running a bullheads dorsal fin 1/2 inch up under my thumbnail while cleaning it.

[kraz88]

Oh man I bet that one hurt!  So how exactly would you fillet a 6" bullhead? guess you could always fry the little sucker whole. 

[Greg_Cornish]

We just cut in behind the head, popped the spine, stuck our finger In and reversed the skin off. Then batter pan fried them. My brother and I caught 99 one day. We tried for 45 minutes to catch that 10th one but couldn't.

Ocassionally the were so fresh they would wiggle in the fry paid and freak mom out.

We really neve knew about filleting until older. We just choked on the bones and mom would tell us to eat bread.