Many years ago Joe Moore would entertain me by describing the different courses of meals he would cook for holidays.

It might be a Christmas fish, a Thanksgiving goose or an Easter dove.

Whatever the meal, the main course usually came from his hunting or fishing and the recipes of some I ran in this column.

Joe worked at McNeese State and the meals he presented to family and friends during holidays were just as manicured as the Cowboy Stadium football field (then natural grass) he maintained. Those memories were brought back to me last week by Alex Soileau.

“When you catch a catfish that size the first thing I think about is a meal for the family on a holiday,” he said.

The catfish was a blue and it weighed 22 pounds, 10 ounces.

“It was actually a little long and I thought it was skinny. With a little more fat on it, it could have gone 30 pounds,” Soileau said.

He and son Blayne had been fishing in the Big Burns on an early morning.

By 11 a.m. they were ready to head out with 30 perch (chinquapin and goggle-eye). They had tried bass but not much action there.

They had launched at the Gibbstown bridge and on running back they noted that clear water was moving out of the marsh because of the tide.

He said they anchored close to the bank, cut a few of the bream into chunks, attached them and tossed out.

“I still had a plastic worm and a bullet weight on my rod so I tied the weight up a little on the line, took off the worm and put on the bream piece,” Soileau noted.

“Blayne had the first hit about 10 minutes after we started. It was a 6-pound gaspergou (fresh water drum). I still had my rod out while he got the gou into the boat. A barge was coming by at the same time pushing water to the side and my line began to move out.

“I thought it was the water action from the barge, but when I pulled up on my rod, the fish yanked it down. I finally got my drag loosened and probably fought it for about 10 minutes before we got it to the side of the boat.

“We figured it was a big gar, but when it came close I could see the slime on the line and knew it was a cat and the biggest fish I had ever had on my bass rod. We didn’t have a net, and when it got close Blayne had to reach down, put one hand in its mouth, the other under the gill and muscle it in.”

When they got the fish into the ice chest, Alex said his first thought was “a couvillion for July Fourth at cousin Jeremy Donovan’s house.

He said once home he filleted the catfish, even cutting the meat off the head.

“The texture is a little different, but I know that the meat from the head adds a lot to the dish. When I was growing up my dad would skin the head and put it all into the pot.”

Two-thirds of the fish was put into the couvillion and the other third was fried along with the perch.

Fifty relatives showed up for the meal on July Fourth.

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The area’s second big deep sea fishing rodeo comes up this weekend, the Salty Catch Fishing Rodeo ,which will headquarter at the Golden Nugget.

Tournament director Crystal LaFosse said more than $50,000 in cash and prizes will be available for fishermen, including a $20,000 prize for a state-record barracuda. According to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the record is 50 pounds, and it was caught in 1970.

Fishing runs Friday and Saturday with weigh-in set for Sunday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. 

“We’ll have live entertainment, raffles, fish displays, food and drinks, giveaways and more.,” LaFosse said.