Inside Angles: Fish and Chips in Wabasha

I’m putting together a book called Life and Times in Catfish Country, which is a chronological record of 25 years of my articles and essays about catfishing, along with newly penned historical perspectives about what was happening in the fishing world at the time each article was written.

In sitting down to look at the mid-1990s, I thought of a story never told. Hollywood movies with fishing settings don’t happen along that often, so, many of you probably remember Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Anne-Margret, Sophia Loren, and others in Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995).

The first movie was set in winter and had ice-fishing scenes. The follow-up movie took place during summer. Matthau played the character Max Goldman; Lemmon was his lifelong friend, neighbor, and fishing companion John Gustafson. When they fished, their dream was to catch the fabled flathead catfish they called Catfish Hunter. The setting was a fictional Wabasha, Minnesota, with the movie mostly shot in St. Paul and on a small lake just northeast of St. Paul.

It was spring 1994 that I got the phone call. “Are you the catfish expert that everyone’s talking about? . . . What can you tell us about flathead catfish?” (the star fish was to be such a catfish), and “Can you help in getting catfish to use on-screen?”

Intrigued, I answered questions and suggested they work with a certain commercial fisherman from Winona, Minnesota. A meeting was set for several weeks later. Howard Deutsch, the big-time movie director, would be in town and wanted to see just what these catfish looked like—and he wanted to ask questions in person.

Present that day was the commercial fisherman who had brought via aerated tank a flathead of about 45 pounds—and me. We met at a movie production facility somewhere near the fairgrounds in St. Paul.

Deutsch pulled up in a giant limo. The driver opened his door and out popped a man full of life and even fuller of questions. “Where’s the catfish? . . . My God but they’re ugly! . . . Do they put up a real battle? How heavy does the tackle have to be? . . . Just how do you fish for them?”

And then he looked at me. “Is this a big one?”

“Well, it’s a good one,” I said.

He thrust his hands out to the side as I remember it, pumping them up and down as he talked: “Well, what’s a real big one—I mean a really big one?!”

I explained: “We’re on the northern edge of the fish’s range—45 pounds is a big one in Minnesota.”

“But what’s a big one?” he interrupted.

“Well, 70 pounds,” I said.

“Then that’s what we need—70 pounds! Get me some of those.” And off he went back into the limo. Several fish ended up being trucked from Kansas, the biggest being about 65 pounds.

A lot of planning goes into shooting movies, and I played that small role after refusing, because of my intense workload at In-Fisherman, to get further involved. They wanted me in an advisory role when they shot the fishing scenes. I just didn’t think I had time.

Looking back, I could have been on the set, rubbing elbows with the stars, maybe hitting the casino with Walter Matthau and having lunch at Lucia’s with Jack Lemmon. Meanwhile, what about Anne-Margret and Sophia Loren? Lonely women in a lonely town. I must have been crazy. I should have quit my job and done the movie.

One of the flatheads ended up being shot in the boat at one point, but the catching scenes were finally filmed with a mechanical fish. Some fine dialogue came from the movie, some of it delivered by crotchety old Grandpa Gustafson, played by Burgess Meredith, who had a way of stealing any scene.

Grandpa Gustafson telling a bedtime story to granddaughter Allie: And then the Mama Bear said,“Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, too!” And finally the Baby Bear looked and said, “Somebody’s sleeping in my bed, and the %*&*#’s still there!” But Goldilocks had a Remington semi-automatic, with a scope and a hair trigger.

Granddaughter Allie: That’s not the way it goes!

Grandpa: And that was the end of the Three Bears.

The movies are worth watching again. I never could find out what happened to Catfish Hunter after the movie was shot, but I suspect it was fish and chips in Wabasha.

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