In case y’all thought I was joking about the catfish;
I used to work at a sporting goods store that held a big fish contest. People brought fish in to weigh them and the winner each month got a $25 gift certificate. Overall winner at the end of the year won a $100 gift certificate.
Some dude brought in a catfish he caught above the dam in in the back of his pickup truck. It weighed 132 pounds.
I weigh 130.
Those two at the top are the sort of fish that absolutely will have a go at trying to eat you. Fucking things are the devil istg
Have I ever mentioned just how much I hate catfish? Because I really fucking hate catfish.
Bet they taste good fried up.
They absolutely do not.
They taste like dirt, because they’re garbage-eating bottom feeders whose diet consists largely of whatever rotting material (or other, live catfish) they can vacuum up into their gaping maws.
(Farm-raised catfish at least have the decency to taste like wet cardboard, given their diet of mostly corn.)
They’re also full of bones, so attempting to eat them is at least 50% picking out the fucking bones.
Hey now, Catfish is delicious.
When they’re smaller.
When they get this big, the meat is just sorta spongy and mushy and no good.
I’ve never heard a credible account of a fish with a toothless mouth and “sucking sludge off the bottom” feeding habits seeing humans as potential food
Yep. The Big Bois around here just sit on the bottom of the river slurping up whatever sludgy organic rotten crap ends up on the bottom of the river (and it’s the Mississippi, so there’s A Lot of riverbed to slurp, and lots and lots of rotten organic matter, which lets them grow to absolutely massive sizes.)
The only way they’d eat a human is if that human was dumped in the river and rotted into bottom sludge. Which, to be fair, probably has happened a time or two.
“A time or two”
It borders Illinois… so. Like. Severe understatement.
That said it being in the midwest and south in general means I’m sure a lot of the human food is less “mob crime” and more “hold my beer” level foolishness.
Yup.
Most of the people who end up being taken by the river are people who were boating or, against all local wisdom which tells you to NOT GO SWIMMING IN THE RIVER BECAUSE IT IS FULL OF TREACHEROUS LITTLE CURRENTS THAT WILL DRAG YOU UNDER AND DROWN YOU, do so anyway.
Add booze, and you’ve got a perfect situation for an ancient and somewhat cranky river god to take a few human sacrifices and the catfish to have a nice rotting people-sludge snack.
valar apologist 