"Catfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Edmund, you're a trump! I'd like to get a gaff into the gills of that catfish, Ingra, when he begins to blow. By Jo, I'd pickle him and make a present of him to the Museum of Natural History. 'Catfishia Venusensis, presented by Jack Ashton, Esq.'—how'd that look on a ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... rushing down the bank to cross the river. Du Gay shot a young cow, and they feasted so bountifully that they were taken ill and could not travel for two days. In the meantime the weather was warm, their meat spoiled, and they were soon again nearly famished, depending on catfish and an occasional turtle. Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewed Picard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven or eight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggy Rock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... swimming across a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would have noted it, perhaps nothing more. A little closer and sharper gaze revealed the fact that the snake bore something in its mouth, which, as we went down to investigate, proved to be a small catfish, three or four inches long. The snake had captured it in the pool, and, like any other fisherman, wanted to get its prey to dry land, although it itself lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy that would have escaped any but sharp ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Mexican War at all. "'These yere kin of Spencer's stands his absence ca'mly, an' no one hears of their settin' up nights, or losin' sleep, wonderin' where he's at. Which I don't reckon now they'd felt the least cur'ous concernin' him—for they're as cold-blooded as channel catfish—if it ain't that Spencer's got what them law coyotes calls a "estate," an' this property sort o' presses their hands. So it falls out like, that along at the last of the year, a black-coat party-lawyer he is-comes breezin' up to me in Warwhoop an' says he's got to ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the boys of the class can catch a few fish of three or four inches in length and carry them in a jar of water to the aquarium. Minnows, chub, perch, catfish, or ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... buttes below Fort Sully are shaped wonderfully like pyramids; walls and cones loomed up against the sky and one could easily imagine himself on the Nile floating past the sphinxes and temples of Egypt. Occasionally the voyagers would be startled by the splash of a gigantic catfish as it leaped out of the water, and the loons driven southward by the approaching winter, filled the air with their melancholy cries. Shortly after midnight a gale sprang up which quickly churned the water into heavy ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... remained his easiest task, and he did it all with a pole that he cut with his clasp knife, a string and a little piece of bent and stiffened wire. He caught perch, bass, suckers, trout, sunfish, catfish, and other kinds, the names of which he did not know. Sometimes when his hook and line had brought him all that was needed, and the day was hot, he would take off his clothing and plunge into the deep, cool pools. Often his friend, Paul Cotter, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had they been combined into one. There were some large fellows, something like pollack, cruising around, and these are called buffaloes. Insinuating their slow course through the crowd were fresh-water gar-fish with long spike noses. The catfish, with its greasy chubby body, portmanteau mouth, and prominent wattles, were precisely like those we used to catch (and eat sometimes) in Australia. Carp were present in numbers, including the mirror and leather varieties, but carp culture was not so fashionable as it was in the States. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... there are the fish ponds," Dick said, indicating with a nod of his head to the right an invisible area beyond the lilacs. "You'll have plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even catfish. You see, I'm a miser. I love to make things work. There may be a justification for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work- day of water just twenty-four hours' long. The ponds are in series, according to the nature of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... bass and sunfish in reservoirs, and for them the upper estuary as well will be a good place to go when it is suitably cleaned up. Some want wide salt water and the lonely cry of gulls, and these the Basin can provide also. Others prefer trout in highland streams, or smallmouth and catfish in the big flowing rivers, and as the state of the waters grows better, so too will all these kinds of fishing. On certain rivers and streams particularly, the assured flow that is going to be needed to cope with diffuse pollution will have a strong good effect on aquatic life and sport fishing. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... they brought three little sunfish, two perch, and one funny-looking fish with horns, which Frank said was a catfish. ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... enough—went to their idle counters, desks and sidewalks; the children to the public schools, the beggar to the church doorstep, physicians to their sick, the barkeeper to his mirrors and mint, and the pot-fisher to his catfish lines in the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... in de Melton Branch, wid hooks. Ketch rock rollers, perch and catfish. They eat mighty good. I like de shortnin' bread and sugar cane 'lasses best and de fust time I ever do wrong ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... diving exhibit they went to the Fisheries Building, which they found very beautiful. In its east pavilion was a double row of grottoed and illuminated aquaria containing the strangest inhabitants of the deep. Here they saw bluefish, sharks, catfish, bill-fish, goldfish, rays, trout, eels, sturgeon, anemones, the king-crab, burr-fish, flounders, toad-fish, and many other beautiful or remarkable inhabitants of the great deep; and the illuminated and decorated aquaria showed them ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... bony fishes. Among the salt-water species, the cod, the halibut, the mackerel, and the bluefish are especially valuable as food. Of the salt-water fishes that go up the rivers into fresh water to breed, the salmon and the shad are widely known. Of a strictly fresh-water fish, the sunfish and catfish are very common. Among the game-fish are the trout, bass, pickerel, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... making each other bets of a thousand dollars about what whale meat would taste like; whether whale liver and bacon could be told from natural liver and bacon, and whether whale steak would probably taste like catfish or mebbe more like mud turtle. Sandy Sawtelle, who always knows everything by divine right, like you might say, he says in superior tones that it won't taste like either one but has a flavour all its own, which even he can't describe, though it will be something like the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... scarce in this part of the Bavispe River; at least we did not succeed in bringing out any by the use of dynamite. We got only five little fish—one catfish, and four suckers, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... river the fish were so numerous that they seemed to entreat the boys to catch them, and to take them out of their crowded quarters. There were bass and black suckers, sunfish and catfish, to say nothing of the sweetest of all, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... him for the last time; alone with him and the kind, holy night before the morrow came which belonged to the other woman, who had written to him as she never could have written to any man in whose arms she ever had lain. And the pity and the tragedy of it was that he loved his wife—the catfish wife. The sharp, pitiless instinct of love told her that the stirring in his veins which had come of late to him, which beat higher, even poignantly, when she was near him now, was only the reflection of what he felt for his wife. She knew the unmerciful truth, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doubtfully—then with more assurance, "but remember what Wilbur Short says in that lovely chapter on 'Communion with the Catfish': I want them brought to the table in the simplest and ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... wells were tainting the water, and the fish wouldn't breed—and the iron slag, too, was spoiling the river, and he knew it. He finally produced for us, out of his box, a three-pound fish,—white perch, calico bass, and catfish formed his stock in trade,—but, before handing it over, demanded the requisite fifteen cents. Evidently he had had dealings with a dishonest world, this hermit fisher, and had learned ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... with a few perch, but plenty of catfish. They went to work with zeal, and soon had enough brush for the fire, which they built at a good distance. And while Graham fed it, Joe skinned his catfish, salted the perch, and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in the mist and yet not in the mist, and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... call any fish a "game fish" that is taken for sport with hook and line. I can no more explain the common prejudice against the catfish and eel than I can tell why an experienced angler should drag a gang of thirteen hooks through the water—ten of them being wane than superfluous. Frank Forester gives five hooks as the number for a trolling gang. We mostly use hooks too small and do not look after points ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... of both Glenn and Joe to drag the immense catfish (for such it proved to be) from its native element. It was about the length and weight of Joe, and had a mouth of sufficient dimensions to have swallowed a man's head. It was given to the ferrymen, who had witnessed the immersion, and were attracted thither ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... the Fish Market, from rows of fish-shaped stalactites hanging from the roof, looking exactly like bass or catfish hung on a string. Another is known as the Toyshop, from quantities of stalactites twisted into all possible shapes, many of which suggest some well-known plaything. In one place is a huge cascade of alabaster resembling a frozen waterfall, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... boy, with a contemptuous emphasis on the mut. "Dat's the janitor's dog an' he's nottin' but a tramp. I wisht he'd fall in de river an' get et by a catfish." ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... weather-stained faces, and pale blue eyes. Otto, the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and clever at his books, but he always dropped out in the spring term as if the river could not get on without him. He and Fritz caught the fat, horned catfish and sold them about the town, and they lived so much in the water that they were as brown and sandy as ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Catfish of our rivers has been described as a new species not less than twenty-five times, on account of differences real or imaginary, but ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish—what do you know about Mrs. Crozier? You may be brutally ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... open country till within one mile of camp at Gunany, a large creek about sixty to eighty yards wide and from twenty to thirty deep, on which we found a number of natives just finishing their day's fishing. They had been successful and had three or four different sorts of fish, namely the catfish of the Murray, the nombre of the Darling, and the brown perch, and I think I observed a small cod. They offered, and I took several, which were very good—they promised to bring more in the morning. We came upon and crossed a large flooded ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... foliage of a cottonwood tree which had fallen into the river. Our most tempting bait failed to interest them; so Emery, ever clever with hook and line, "snagged" one just to teach them better manners. It was a Colorado River salmon or whitefish. That evening I "snagged" a catfish and used this for salmon bait, a fourteen-pound specimen ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... nuver did furgive Marse Chan, an' Miss Anne she got mad too. Wimmens is mons'us onreasonable nohow. Dey's jes' like a catfish: you can n' tek hole on 'em like udder folks, an' when you gits 'im yo' can ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... AEROLITE.—The Galt Gazette (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an obscure portion of Georgia near Clayton Court-house, which is a hoax, and has been so pronounced by the postmaster ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... by its low-browed, rocky head, crouching close to the end of the "fill," its length concealed in the clefts of the rocks—as if lying in wait for whatever crossed its path—as well as its ragged, half-round, catfish gash of a mouth from out of which poured at regular intervals a sickening breath—yellow, blue, greenish often—and from which, too, often came dulled explosions, followed by belchings of debris which centipedes of cars dragged clear ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... secret band referred to the Bible, Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and Book of Mormon to substantiate their doctrines; and if any of them did not remain steadfast, they ripped open their bowels and gave them to the catfish.'" He named two men, inmates of his own house, who, he had discovered, were such thieves. The prophet followed this statement with some remarks, declaring, "Thieving must ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... rather terrible world of the hospital and home. It was not Johnny alone, it was Johnny scrubbing a home porch and doing it badly, it was Johnny in her father's old clothes, it was Johnny fishing for catfish in the creek, or lending his pole to one of the little brothers whose pictures were on her ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... live close to the bay and that gran' and us take a stove and cotch catfish and perch and cook 'em on the bank and us go meet oyster boats and daddy git ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... if you disturb this balance by extensive fishing, isn't it easy to see that you've got to make up for it somewhere? We don't have to worry over keeping up the supply of catfish, for example, because Nature is being left alone, and she has worked the problem out. But if suddenly a big catfish market developed—as it easily might, because, in spite of popular opinion, catfish is good ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... proverbs it's little we're wishing," the boys mutter low, as they wearily delve; "the neighbor boy says there is elegant fishing—he went after catfish and came home with twelve. We have to stay here doing labors that cramp us, while others are pulling out fish by the pound! They're playing baseball every day on the campus, and down in the grove there's ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason |
