Catfish at Wendy's

Yesterday we treated the kids to Wendy's (which I love, but usually regret) on the way home from Shenandoah National Park. The location in Vienna is right next to a grungy tributary of the Potomac. On our way out, a woman on the creek side of the parking lot calls over and asks if I know something or other, but I couldn't understand what she said. She's wrangling a toddler, so I cross the parking lot.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"Do you know how to de-hook a catfish? Weird question, I know."

Her son and a friend (around nine or ten years old) were fishing from the bank and had caught a six incher, but one kid was clueless and the other was afraid to try since being stabbed once by a catfish barb. Searching my memory with the lone keyword "catfish" pulls up a visual from twenty years ago of my father, somewhere on the Minong Flowage in northwest Wisconsin, yowling as the one catfish I ever caught latches onto his thumb while he tries to free it from my fishing line.

"Um, sure. It's been awhile, but I'll give it a shot."

Peering into a tupperware of murky water, I see first that it's not just hooked, but also entangled in the fishing line like some sort of aquatic Bob Flanagan. Naturally, the hook is lodged in the roof of its mouth to boot, so between that and the fact that the stupid thing won't unclamp its jaws, it takes a minute to free it.

Meanwhile, the kids catch another catfish, this one nearly twice the size of the first.

"What the heck are you guys using for bait?"

"Bacon and sausage."

"Looks better than what I just ate."

"It's from Whole Foods. It's all I had in the house."

Suburbia at its finest.