He hated checking on the catfish strung on the line. "Looks like the two of us got us some kind of a gut ache, Fish." He was really going batty talking to a fish, but it seemed like there was a telepathy going on between their two brains.

Really, it did seem there were brain waves trading back and forth between him and the struggling fish. Two creatures in pain, one brought on by the other, nevertheless both were on a string they could not get off without dying.

The catfish held its head far enough out of the water so its liquid eyes could stare at its hated captor. After a moment, it sank back into its world beneath the murky water where it wanted to be free.

There was a time or two the man thought strongly about letting his twenty or so pound fish go on downstream. "You'd been a bass, you'd have died long before now. No staying power at all even though they can fight harder than you. Guess both of us are kinda the same, Catfish, short on fight but long on stayin' power."

It seemed the catfish was bent on doing nothing but calling him swear words right now instead of communicating any philosophical stuff. In fact, he was hiding as far back on the line as he could and still not get out into the deeper water where a turtle could shred his tail.