Yesterday I mentioned the fish kill in the lake at Camp Strake in 1956. A few years later, and a couple of counties away, I was involved in another incident involving catfish and a Boy Scout camp.
Camp Mohawk was west of Alvin, Texas, off Highway 35 along the banks of Chocolate Bayou. It served, at various times, as a church camp, a Boy Scout camp, and sometimes both. For part of the summer of 1959, I worked at the swimming pool there as a lifeguard.
A break in the dam along with a particularly dry spring and summer had caused the fishing pond on the property to go completely dry. One morning, I was taking a short cut across the dry lakebed when I felt something move beneath my feet. I kicked about two inches of hard crust off the area, and I found a live catfish there in the mud! It was a channel cat that weighed between two and three pounds.
Catfish are particularly hardy creatures, and there is quite a bit of controversy about whether they hibernate in freezing temperatures or conditions of extreme drought. I don’t know if hibernation is the correct term, so I won’t get into that argument.
What I do know is that this fish (and several others) had managed to survive for several months without eating anything and getting what little oxygen could be drawn from the moisture in the mud. I think this would require a state of suspended animation very similar to hibernation.
I showed the camp caretaker what I had “caught.” We went back with hoes and rakes, and found several more – all between one and three pounds.
It would make a good story if we had found enough for a big fish-fry, but we did not. We did find enough to provide a good meal for his family and for mine.
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