Last week I wrote a column about using gas containing ethanol in your outboard motor.

The damage and high repair bills that 10 percent ethanol (E-10) is causing can be contained if you can’t find a station that sells E-Free fuel.

Until recently there were only a few additives like STA-BIL Marine Formula and Sea Foam that claim to prevent E-10 damage.

Both additives are good, but they didn’t help with the major reason E-10 is creating problems, which is phase separation.

If you leave your boat parked for just a few weeks the ethanol separates from the gas, and because it is heavier than gas it goes to the bottom of your fuel cell, where your pick up line is located.

What that means is when you fire the motor up you could be running straight, 100 percent ethanol through your engine. Ethanol burns cooler than gas and stresses motors out. It also acts as a solvent, which means all that gook built up in your fuel tank and anything made of plastic or rubber will eventually melt.

Being in the marine business I certainly search for all the possible cures and solutions. I won’t repeat last week’s column but you can read it on The Natchez Democrat’s website.

Not many people know that catfish are pursued by more people than the ever-so popular largemouth bass. Living this close to the Mississippi River and the landlocked oxbows makes this the catfish capital of the South.

The beauty of fishing for catfish is you can do it cheap.

In many cases you can have a great day (or night) fishing from the shore. No gas bills, no boat and less overhead.

You may catch an occasional 20-plus pound catfish from the shore, but to really get serious about cat fishing you need a river boat and a good sonar unit.

You can find the fish on the sonar instead of poking around and waiting on the fish to find you.

Anyone can go out, bait up with a gob of red worms and tight line and catch some catfish.

To catch the giants you have to know how to use sonar, know the river stages and where to be at what level plus a host of other things.

I classify giants as anything over 30 to 35 pounds. My largest to date is a 64-pound flathead and my largest blue cat weighed 48 pounds.

The blue fought twice as hard as the flathead and it bit me when I got it in the boat. Blues are tough fish and they like cut bait or anything that really stinks.

Flatheads prefer live bait.

Right now I’m selling 15 to 20 pounds of goldfish a week and the season just started.

That’s like 90 goldfish proof that many people prefer to fish for big catfish.

As the bass fishing just keeps getting tougher and tougher more and more people will began to look for a trophy species that actually live in our area rivers and lakes — the catfish.

Just keep in mind you cannot catch what is not there. So why not fish for something that’s there and easy to catch and could weigh more than 100 pounds!