Savannah River Catfish Stew

The Savannah River is one of Georgia’s longest and largest rivers and defines most of the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. I’ve seen photos of my grandfather and his brother with catfish almost as big as a man that they caught in the Savannah River. Wild catfish that live in rivers, lakes, and ponds are bottom dwellers, and the flesh picks up a distinctively earthy flavor. For years, there were catfish in our pond even though the pond was solely stocked with bass and bream. Dede explained to me when I was young that the catfish eggs would be transported on the wings and feet of the water birds. So, it was something special when we would catch them. We’d catch these monsters, and they terrified me, with their flat black mouths and whiskers popping as they flailed on the shore. The whiskers are scary, but they are not what hurts. Dede had a few special tools in his tackle box to deal with catfish. The fish have sharp spines on their fins, and he would fearlessly grab them behind the head and clip off the fins with pliers. Catfish also differ in that they don’t have scales. But their skin is tough and they have to be skinned before they are eaten. He’d hammer a nail through their head into the tree and, using the same pliers, peel the skin off the fish like taking off a sock from your foot. If you are not catching your own, make a point to buy American farm-raised catfish, which are fed a diet of high-protein pellets made from soybean meal, corn, and rice that give the flesh a consistent, sweet, mild flavor. You just don’t know what you are getting if you buy imported fish.