Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Associated with each section of the country are characteristic landscapes, pastimes and forms of expression. For example, the thought of New England carries with it details like lobsters and clam chowder, and terms like "down East" and "wicked good." Similarly, it's hard to envision a state in the West without conjuring up vivid pictures of mountains, plains, cowboys and ski slopes. And to imagine our nation's coasts -- thousands of miles in extent -- is to bring to mind images of surf and sea and sandy beaches.

So what presents itself to the mind's eye when someone says "the South"? Magnolia trees and mint juleps? Cotton fields and live oaks? Pine trees and red clay hills? Barbecue? Certainly, all of these fit -- but one representation that I often recall probably lodged itself in my brain the first time I read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

I see a couple of barefoot, freckled boys in ragged overalls, mongrel dog in tow, heading out with cane poles resting across their shoulders to fish at the nearest creek or pond. There's a chance that they might be out after goggle-eyes or stump perch, but I clearly picture these boys as being on a quest for catfish -- because, more decades ago than I care to recall, I was one of them, ambling down to the water, unfettered by shoes and shirts, with the sole goal of trying to entice a catfish into biting.

For me and those I grew up with, it was necessary to learn to crawl before we could walk, especially when it came to catching catfish. We started out at the bottom of the catfish barrel by fishing for bullheads -- "mudcats" to us. We loved them, because neither trickery nor skill was needed to get them to accept our offerings.

Later we'd graduate to more-respectable species of catfish, like flatheads, which grew big and mean in the bayous near our home. Setting out limblines baited with live goggle-eyes -- sometimes even small mudcats -- occasionally resulted in unparalleled excitement when we'd paddle up to one of our setlines and see the cypress limb violently lashing the water. The fish on the line could weigh 5 pounds -- or 50.

But if one species of catfish defines the South, it'd have to be the channel cat. When you visit a catfish eatery in the South (there's one on nearly every corner nowadays), what'll be served to you on that platter garnished with sides of fries, onion, pickles and hush puppies is likely to be a heaping helping of channel catfish. Granted, these crunchy, sweet, tasty morsels came from a fish reared in a pond at a commercial farm somewhere; a kid with a cane pole and a gob of red wigglers caught the ones flouncing on the bank of my memory.

Jeff Samsel, author of Catfishing in the South, put it succinctly when he wrote, "While overgrown blue and flathead catfish attract most of the catfishing headlines, channel cats are the whiskered fish that most Southern anglers know and love." Indeed so.

Channel cats are easily identified by a silver sheen accented by small black spots on their backs and sides; additionally, their tails are deeply forked. They're generally streamlined in appearance.