The Life of Commercial Catfisherman (and his family)
My papa, Henry “Ray” Seaver, was a commercial catfisherman from the time he was discharged from the army in 1957/58 until 1968 when he went to work for the South Florida Water Management District. During his catfishing years, he typically worked 6 days a week, taking Sunday off.
That wasn’t, however, his first foray into fishing. His father, Eddie, was a commercial catfisherman and his family pressured him to drop out of school to start fishing, which he did in the 8th grade.
The life of a catfisherman was hard and the money wasn’t good. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median income of all families in the United States in 1965 was about $6,900. In Florida, that was $6,312. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1965 the average annual salary for a commercial catfisherman was around $2,890.
My mama, Peggy, says, “That sounds right. We were poor, poor, poor. Sometimes Daddy just caught supper. But we were a gloriously happy family with wonderful, loving parents.”
Anatomy of a trotline
During the time Ray and Eddie were fishing, most freshwater commercial catfisherman in Florida used trotlines to catch their fish.
A trotline is a long line with multiple baited hooks tied to it at regular intervals. Ray’s lines were 1500 feet long with bleach bottles on either end for easy retrieval. Every line had 500 hooks, each set 3 feet apart, and he put out 4 lines at a time. Every 25 hooks alternated a railroad spike or a piece of cottonwood so the line wasn’t flat in the water at just one depth, but went up and down to increase the odds of catching fish no matter where they were in the water.
Racking trotlines
Ray used trotline boxes to keep things straight. Often referred to as jump boxes, these boxes help fishermen quickly and efficiently deploy multiple hooks in a short amount of time. Because this method of fishing is mostly out of use, it was challenging to find resources to share what it was like. This video demonstrates racking lines, though there are no hooks in this example The image below captures Ray’s set-up; you can see the jump boxes in the foreground.
Baiting trotlines
Fishermen—and their families, in our case—place the bait onto each and every hook by hand. They were constantly up against the clock to have at least 2,000 hooks baited and ready to go every single day.
Ray and Myrtle—and both girls—baited these lines with corn, shrimp, mayflies, soap, grubs, beef heart, eels and more. In many cases, they had to catch and/or process what they baited the lines with, adding more steps to an already arduous task.
Peggy says, “We loved baiting with corn; it was clean. Baiting with Camay soap was good and mayflies were ok too. I hated baiting with grubs. The absolute worst was baiting with beef heart to catch eels. When we caught the eels, we had to bait the lines with them immediately so Daddy could take them out right away. We didn’t really like them either because they were bloody and nasty.”
Most of the baiting took place in the barn with the exception of the eels. Those were baited at the lake so they could be taken out right away. According to Peggy, “sometimes we’d go out in the boat with him, but most of the time we’d just play on the beach of the lake.”
Putting out trotlines
Ray would take the trotlines out each evening is his 18’ plywood skipjack.
Ray would sit at the back of the boat with the jump boxes in the back corner. When putting the lines out, the main line was typically set up perpendicular to the shoreline or along a creek channel. The end of the line would be anchored on one side and then stretched out across the water before being secured on the other side as well.
Taking in trotlines
At daybreak, Ray would be back on the lake to collect the lines—and hopefully plenty of fish. He’d locate the bleach bottle at the end of the line, and, straddling a seat at the front of the boat, would pull in all 2,000 hooks by hand. There was a pick-up box between his feet at the front of the boat where the lines went (he’d pop off any leftover bait as he brought the lines in so they didn’t have to do it later) and the catfish—and whatever else he’d caught—would go in the section of the boat behind his seat.
On a good day, his haul would include plenty of blue catfish. They were smaller, but worth more money. He’d also catch channel catfish, flathead catfish and bullhead catfish, which were worth the least. Turtles and other assorted fish were also brought in.
Cleaning and selling the catch
When he returned to shore, Ray would “ring” the fish (make a cut on each side under the gills) as he brought them out of the boat and toss them in a #3 washtub. When that was complete, he’d put the fish in the back of his truck and take them to the cleaning shed . The shed featured a table that had 3 parts:
A section on one side to hold the fish when they were dumped out of the washtub
An a-frame section with hooks section in the center
A section on the other side where the fish were placed once they were skinned (or “skint,” as it was often called
One by one, each fish would be hooked on the a-frame under the chin. Ray would skin the fish by taking the catfish pincers and pulling the skin down from where the fish had been ringed. Then he’d gut and head the fish using the gutting knife. The clean fish went into one washtub and the heads into another.
Peggy recalls, “mama and us girls were not allowed to handle this part of the process at all. Daddy and his friends and their sons could do it—and we knew exactly how to do it—but we were girls and we could not do any sort of cleaning. They wanted better for us.”
Once the fish cleaning was complete, Ray went to the fish house to sell them while Myrtle and the girls racked and baited so the process could start all over again.
The fish guts and heads were taken to the “head hole” at the end of the dirt road. Peggy describes this: “The guts and heads would be transported to the head hole on the tailgate of the truck. It was down where Comanche Road ended and there was a little road that went from Comanche to Cherokee. A very short way down that little road—just a couple of truck lengths—was the ditch that served as the head hole. You had to be very careful because there were catfish heads (with their bad whiskers) laying all around where the raccoons and buzzards had drug them out. If you got stuck by one of those whiskers, it could get terrible infected.”
Trotlines today
Illegal in Florida since 1994, the main danger of trotlines is entanglement which puts swimmers, boaters and wildlife at risk. Additionally, when trotlines are set up improperly or left unattended for too long, there can be a risk of overfishing.
