Catfish of DeGray Lake -Arkadelphia AR

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Catfish of DeGray Lake (Arkadelphia).

If you’ve lived near the water long enough, you’ve probably heard about it. Maybe not from a book or a sign or anything official, just passed along the way these things usually are. A quiet story. A knowing look. A sentence that starts with, “I don’t know if it’s true, but…”

They say there’s a catfish down there as big as a boat.

Not one of those “record-breaking” ones you see in magazines. Bigger than that. Older than that. A fish that doesn’t rush. A fish that learned the shape of the land before the water ever covered it.

DeGray Lake hasn’t always been a lake. Before the dam. Before the marinas. Before the fishing lines and pontoons and summer weekends.. it was hills and hollers and low places where creeks pooled up. When the water was dammed it gave these fish more room to grow.

And if fish big enough was already living there… nestled in the banks of the creek, now it had room to grow to an incredible size!

The old-timers say the catfish doesn’t surface much. It doesn’t need to. It moves slow along the bottom, where trees still stand and roads still run, where the lake remembers what it used to be. Some say they’ve seen the water swell up for no reason. Others swear their lines went tight.. not like a tug, but like they’d hooked the lake itself.

Then there are the stories about boats.

A shadow passing under them.
A stillness.
A feeling like something down below is deciding whether to move.. and the divers who swear they will never go back.

Most people laugh it off. And maybe that’s the smart thing to do. But if you’ve ever been out on DeGray early in the morning, when the fog sits above and the lake goes quiet.. you might understand why the legend sticks around.

The water gets glassy. Sound carries different. And for just a moment, it feels like you’re not alone out there.

I don’t think the catfish are scary. That’s not how these stories usually go. I think it’s more like a keeper. A witness. Something that remembers the land the way it was and watches the people who come and go on top of it now.

A reminder that the lake is deeper than it looks.

So if you’re fishing one evening and your line pulls hard, harder than it should.. and then suddenly lets go…
Just know there are legends in the deep… and not only catfish, there are gators too and just imagine the size.

Yours,

April