The Opelousas: The King of Catfish

Popularly known as Ops, flatheads and yellow cats, the Opelousas is the second largest catfish found in Louisiana, and many people rate it number one for table fare. Richard Lasseigne caught the ninety-five-pound state record in Wax Lake in 2007. Only the blue cat is bigger.

Opelousas catfish have wide flat heads with small eyes, wide mouths and a brown motley color that often turns yellowish when out of the water. They prefer live bait and can swallow surprisingly large prey.

When I was growing up fishing on Dugdemona River, my family prized the Opelousas over every other fish because of its large size and delicious taste.

Uncle Preston Copeland taught me the ins and outs of fishing on Dugdemona and entertained me with stories of days gone by when Mr. Ben Hutto was his frequent fishing partner. Mr. Ben and his wife, Miss Eunice, lived just up the gravel road from my grandparents and were a fixture in the Cypress Creek community.

Mr. Ben drove an old jeep to the creek and if he stopped by we knew he had some fish to show off. One day, Mr. Ben showed up with a thirty-three-pound Opelousas that he had caught that morning. It’s still the biggest Dugdemona catfish I’ve ever seen, although one old timer told me of some Ops that weighed over one hundred pounds.

Mr. Ben caught the big fish on a trotline that he and Uncle Preston kept stretched across a spot we called the “Little Water.” The Ernest Slough emptied into the creek there and the shallow water dropped off into a deep eddy.

Uncle Preston explained how he and Mr. Ben could always tell when they had a good fish on because the bush the trotline was tied to would be shaking violently as they pulled up in the boat. One morning, they took three Ops off of it that weighed from ten to twenty pounds each.

I had my best Op fishing week in 1978 when I was a graduate student at Louisiana Tech. Someone told me that catfish loved goldfish, so I bought some to put on set hooks during my annual spring yo-yo fishing trip.

When I returned the next morning, the first set hook was pulled back to the cypress tree like it was hung up. When I tugged on it, however, something big tugged back.

After a struggle, I finally netted a seventeen-pound Opelousas. Then, around the bend, I had another one that weighed nearly ten pounds. I ended up that week with about fifteen nice Ops.

Uncle Preston was also yo-yoing at the time, and I proudly showed him my fish. Afterwards, he went to town to buy some goldfish and put out several set hooks, as well.

 A few nights later when Daddy and I were checking my yo-yos, we passed by one of Uncle Preston’s set hooks that was limp and pulled back into some cypress knees. We figured it was hung up and decided to free and rebait it. All of our family fished the same stretch of creek and would rebait each other’s hooks if we saw the need, but we never removed fish.

Pop and I were surprised to find that the set hook wasn’t hung up at all, and after a long battle we landed an eighteen-pound Opelousas. We would have never touched the line had we known there was a fish on, and we wanted Uncle Preston to have the thrill of catching it. Afraid the Op would get loose before he came back, I cut off a piece of nylon line, ran it through the fish’s gills and mouth, tied it to the set hook and eased it back into the water.

Early the next morning, Uncle Preston came by the house to show off his big fish. After telling us how he wrestled the Op into the boat by himself, I asked if he had noticed anything odd about it.

When Uncle Preston said it looked like it had been tangled up in an old broken trotline, Pop and I confessed to what we had done. In Uncle Preston’s unique way, he stared at us with a blank look for a second or two and then burst out in his big hearty laugh.

Another memorable Opelousas came out of my parent’s two-acre pond. If I had enough fish for the freezer, I would sometimes release smaller Ops into the pond to go along with the channel cats that were already stocked.

One day I was checking a trotline that I had put out a few days earlier. On the last hook was a fourteen-pound. Op that fell into the bottom of the boat as soon as I pulled it over the gunwale. On the hook was a half-rotten, foot-long channel cat.

The channel cat had been hooked first, and then the Opelousas swallowed the channel cat. The latter’s fins kept the Op hung up just long enough for me to land it. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve seen while fishing.

Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294