The Day Dad Ran the Fastest Fish Fry in the County
If you grew up around here, you already know that some of the absolute finest fishing in the world doesn’t happen out in the middle of a big, crowded reservoir with twenty thousand dollars worth of sparkly fiberglass and a sonar screen lit up like a Christmas tree. It happens tucked away behind a barbwire gate on a red-dirt farm pond, where the pines grow thick right down to the red clay bank, the dragonflies treat your rod tip like a private perch, and the water stays as quiet and smooth as glass until something down in the dark decides to take a bite.
We’ve pulled plenty of bream and crappie out of deep brush piles in our day, but if you want an afternoon where nobody looks at a watch and nobody has a single earthly worry, you find yourself a good stock pond with a sturdy wooden pier.
One particular afternoon stands out above all the rest. It was one of those days where the summer heat was just right—warm enough to make you appreciate a shady breeze, but not quite hot enough to melt the soles right off your sneakers. We had gathered up a whole crowd of us out on an old wooden pier that jutted out into the pond. My family was there, along with a few longtime friends, and I had invited a good buddy from work to come out and join the circus.
Now, when our family decides to go down to a pond, we don’t believe in halfway measures. Some folks pack a squashed sandwich in a plastic baggie and call it a day, but Dad had grander ambitions. He brought along the big cast-iron propane fish fryer, lugged the whole rig right out onto the wooden planks of the pier, hooked up the tank, and got that burner roaring like an airplane engine warming up on a runway.
Mama had whipped up a giant bowl of hush puppy batter back at the house, stirred up thick and seasoned just right, and hauled it down in a covered tub ready for business. The oil was bubbling hot, the hush puppies were ready to drop, and Dad stood by his station like an admiral at the helm of a battleship. His official post for the afternoon was Head Surgeon, Skinner, and Fry Cook.
The rest of us had our lines out in the water, loaded down with fresh chicken livers. If you’ve ever baited a hook with chicken liver, you know it’s a sloppy, slimy affair that smells like high summer, but a catfish simply cannot resist it. It only takes a minute or two of that bait sinking down into the mud before the line goes taut, the rod bows down, and the tug-of-war is on.
That was when the assembly line went to work. It was the fastest farm-to-table operation known to humankind.
One of us would haul in a fat, flopping catfish and swing it over the boards directly into Dad’s hands. He’d grab it behind the pectoral fins without batting an eye and start dressing it out on the spot. And when I say Dad “dressed” that fish, let’s be clear—I don’t mean he was tailoring a little Sunday skirt and bonnet for it. He took his sharp fillet knife, made two quick, practiced slicing cuts right down the back on either side of the dorsal fin, grabbed his rusty pair of slip-joint pliers, clamped down hard on the hide, and peeled the skin right off in one clean, violent yank.
Off came the head, off went the fins, and before that poor fish even realized it had left the bottom of the pond, it was rolled heavily in seasoned cornmeal and dropped straight into the screaming-hot peanut oil.
Dad didn’t waste a thing, either. The heads, skin, and innards went straight over the side with a quiet splash, heading back down to the murky depths for nature’s own recycling program. It kept the turtles happy and the remaining catfish well-fed, though I imagine the ones swimming down below had to wonder what kind of alien abduction was taking place up on the surface. That catfish went from swimming peacefully in the cool water to crackling golden brown in under three minutes flat. The poor thing genuinely didn’t know what hit it.
When Dad scooped that fish out of the rolling oil, drained it on brown paper, and piled it high next to a handful of golden, onion-studded hush puppies, it was nothing short of heaven on a paper plate. You burnt your fingers trying to break into the flaky, steaming white meat, and you burnt your tongue because you didn’t have the good sense or the patience to wait for it to cool down. It was crisp, salty, sweet, and so fresh it practically still had the pond water in it.
There we were, sitting on the edge of the weathered pier with our feet dangling over the water, soaking up the sunshine, eating like kings, and washing down the feast with cold sodas from the ice chest. Everybody was grinning and covered in cornmeal dust, completely content.
Except my work friend seemed to be getting an awful lot of exercise.
Every fifteen or twenty minutes, she’d lay her pole down, excuse herself with a polite little cough, and march all the way back up the red-dirt hill to where her car was parked under the shade trees. She’d lean into the driver’s side, fuss around for a minute, and then stroll back down to the pier clutching her heavy stainless-steel insulated tumbler like it held state secrets.
After her second marathon trek up the hill in the afternoon heat, Dad wiped his greasy hands on his rag, took a look over at her, and cracked a grin.
“Darlin’,” he said, laughing in that easy way he had, “why in the world don’t you just bring that cooler right down here to the pier? We don’t care a bit in the world if you enjoy a beer, but you’re gonna wear your boots out walking up that hill!”
She froze mid-step, her face turned about the exact same shade of pink as a boiled shrimp, and then she burst out laughing. He had her pegged from the first trip. She’d been trying so hard to be on her best, polite Southern behavior around the family, sneaking a cold brew into her tumbler out of sight so she wouldn’t offend a soul. But that was Dad for you—he saw right through the polite pretense and called it out with a smile before you could even think to feel embarrassed.
Naturally, nobody cared at all. She hiked up the hill one last time, hauled that cooler right down to the wooden planks, popped the top off a cold one in broad daylight, and pulled up a seat next to the rest of us.
We sat out on that creaky pier until the shadows started stretching long and purple across the surface of the pond. The oil in the fryer cooled down, the batter bowl was scraped clean down to the white plastic, and our fingers stayed sticky from bait and sweet hush puppies. There wasn’t an email to answer, a clock to punch, or a single trouble following us down that dirt road. Just good company, a mess of fresh fish, a little gentle ribbing, and not a solitary care in the wide world.