Bass may be America’s favorite sportfish, but the bottom-dwelling, omnivorous catfish is pure Americana. We’ve caught giants here on the Potomac River, tried to catch them on blue soap in Zambia, and still hope to land some surubim in South America – but we’ve never had a brew named after one.

My first fishing memory – the one that spawned or at least unearthed this obsession – was on the Chesapeake Bay. It was the summer of 1976, and my dad and two of his friends decided to charter a boat for bluefish and bring along the three 6 year-olds. At some point during the day, everyone else stopped to eat, but I couldn’t stop fishing. Yes, that jug-eared, emaciated kid on the right is me.

Every time I fish with my friend Chichi Rodriguez at Anglers Inn Lake El Salto in Mexico, I make sure to ask him early in the session what time it is. Without missing a beat, he pops open the cooler, opens a Pacifico (or two) and responds, “Beer thirty.”