Fishing, hunting and canoodling

Reach under a dead log in the river and pull out a catfish! That's what canoodling is all about I guess. At least according to a news feature on TV in the twilight hours this morning. I thought I was dreaming but there it was on the screen. Some guy reaching down into the muddy waters of some river in the South somewhere. He pulls out this huge cat fish he grabbed by the bottom lip. Of course that fish was not wanting much to be made into dinner for this guys family so it was squirming all over the place, but to no avail. He's probably cut into a hundred nuggets, deep fried and digested by now. I think you've got to hand it to those folks for figuring out how to still get fish when they aren't biting on a fishing line in the middle of the hot summer. Downright ingenious! In my opinion. Short of the fact that copper head snakes also lay in the places too that is. The same program covered shooting feral hogs from a helicopter too. I thought there must be too much expense involved in that one. Grabbing a fish is free. I like the free part, that sort of thing we can all participate in.

Over the years the things we are able to do around this neck of the woods has changed. The TV news I just mentioned was mostly concerned about how the laws in the South that were changed to allow those two pursuits. People have done them for years but now they are legal as well. Up North here the laws are usually made to restrict what we do. I used to be able to herd cat fish and suckers up a creek and hit them onto shore with a baseball bat for harvesting for food or fertilizer. We didn't have to worry about grabbing snakes either. I'm thinking that would be way outside of the law these days. I wouldn't necessarily be the one canoodling anywhere but I'd really like the fact that it was legal. I honestly don't know what exactly is legal and what isn't any more when it comes to putting some fish or game on the table. I wonder if some of those folks that make the laws ever did any fishing or hunting of their own.