Holy cow, have you been outside in the last month? The noise, the racket, the bugs! Scientists tell us that this is a once in 200-year event. Two great strains of these unique little bugs hatched at the same time. My wife and kids have taken to studying them and even to getting me to send to the University of North Georgia a box of bug bodies. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be mailing bugs, but it made my wife happy. The result of this great hatch is an infestation of undesirables in the southland last seen when Sherman marched through. To put a point on it I think the cicadas are more useful. I mean at least fish eat them.

With my schedule as of late I haven’t had the opportunity to fish all that much, but a break in it gave my son and me a chance to get out two evenings in a row. He wanted to do some bream fishing. So, I got some worms and away we went to Oconee in search of bluegill and shellcrackers. We rigged up with slip bobbers and small hooks and started looking for a place out of the wind. It seems that if I get to go fishing right now it will be windy. I don’t mean just a light breeze either. I mean, I saw Dorothy and Toto going by. We found a cove to hide in and at first it was hit and miss. We caught a few small ones but nothing of note and not many. However, all of a sudden, when I started contemplating a move, I saw a dorsal fin cut through the water and a cicada get eaten. That bug had just slapped down on the water and was trying, with not much success, to take flight again. A big blue cat decided he was tasty. This started happening over and over again all around us.

Suddenly, we went from a bream fishing expedition to catfish hunting. It was truly an evening to remember. We caught a ton of cats that night, Blues and Channels. The biggest was just six to 7 pounds, and we caught lots of fingerlings, too. The way I described it to a buddy of mine was this was as close to shark fishing as I have seen in freshwater. I was watching fish with dorsal fins out sometimes turn and chase down bait to aggressively hit it and eat it. We ran through two containers of red worms before the bite finally died down that evening.

The next day we came back for more. There were two differences, though. The first, and in my opinion the biggest, was that the water was a lot muddier. It seems the rain from a couple of days before had finally made its way down to the lake. Also, the wind had not been as severe so the amount of bugs on the water was a lot less it seemed. We still managed to put together a few fat cats to add to the filet count.

You see, the purpose of all of this became very clear after I saw the first cat chase a bug. My mother had said how much she wished for some fried catfish like we used to make. Well, I might not be much else, but I do tend to do things my mother asks like write about funny people, dogs at church, and provide her with a catfish dinner for Mother’s Day. Beau and I cleaned about 13 or 14 cats and got a whopping 5.5 pounds of fillets from them! Here’s the kicker though. Every cat we cleaned was stuffed full of cicadas. So, my entire week, it seems, was filled with the hum of the cicada.

Tight lines and following seas y’all!

—Outdoors columnist James Pressley can be reached at jameskpressley@gmail.com .