The author shows off a heavy blue catfish caught in the coastal waters of Grand Pass south of Venice. Photo courtesy of Pete Cooper Jr.

Louisiana's coastal anglers are well aware of the fact that catfish inhabit the waters that they probe for speckled trout, redfish, flounder and such. Not many of the folks who've fished here for very long have avoided at least a few punctures from the sea catfish; likewise, a large percentage of them will assuredly have been treated to a slimed-up line and leader courtesy of the "sail cat" -- the gafftopsail catfish. But not nearly so large a number of those folks are aware that both blue and channel catfish are also found in many of our state's marshes and estuaries.

And those cats too get pretty big there!

COASTAL CATS
I was first made aware of these cats' presence in the early 1970s. A neighbor in Buras who'd grown a bit too rotund to continue duck hunting from his 10-foot airboat desperately needed something to occupy the time he'd once spent on waterfowling and soon discovered that he could conquer winter's low tides in that tiny craft and reach some deep tidal cuts in the marsh between Tante Phine and Tiger passes, where he set three trotlines, each with perhaps a dozen hooks baited them with thumb-sized pieces of common eel.

Early on, the fish he caught were respectable specimens -- 2- to 3-pounders. One morning, he returned home soaked to the bone, three fish in the bed of his truck, the smallest topping 30 pounds, the largest weighing 57. He was wet from unsuccessfully trying to wrestle a much larger one into his boat.

My first hands-on experiences with coastal cats took place not long thereafter in the Venice Dome oil field -- the celebrated "Wagon Wheel." Granted, those waters are directly influenced by the effluent from Red Pass and can become pretty fresh, but the field's canals commonly hold redfish and flounder and seasonally host speckled trout and even striped bass -- or at least they once did. A friend had taken a 17-pound blue catfish one morning while we were prospecting for reds, and that fish -- along with the smaller ones that we caught from time to time -- led to the thought of trotlining for them.

So one afternoon, another buddy and I set an 18-hook line in three canals, baiting the hooks with crawfish that we'd picked up alongside the Tidewater Road the night before. The next day, we discovered that we'd put a really serious dent in the local redfish population -- but nary a cat had we caught!

Greatly preferring to catch our reds on rods rather than trotlines, we moved the lines to some canals that appeared to be less appealing to the reds, baited them with chunks of rabbit meat and passed the night in eager anticipation of the morrow's supper of fresh fried catfish fillets and hush puppies.

And it was some mighty good eatin', too!

I relate that incident not as inspiration for you to start spending your time running trotlines for catfish rather than fishing for redfish, but to inform you that cats of the desirable types are present, often in good numbers, and in places not especially known for them.

FORCEFUL REMINDER
In some areas, logic would suggest that these species should be present, but that slips your mind as you continue on with your primary objective. Then, occasionally, you receive a really sudden -- and quite forceful -- reminder.