North Carolina politicians aren't the only ones who like catfish.
A quick check at the N.C. State library reveals an academic treatise from 1978 that elaborates on why that old Southern joke has stuck around so long.
In the autumn issue of Critical Inquiry, Wayne C. Booth writes that a lawyer friend was hired to defend a large Southern utility against a suit by a smaller one. Things went well until closing arguments:
Then the lawyer for the smaller utility said, speaking to the jury, almost as if incidentally to his legal case, "So now we see what it is. They got us where they want us. They holding us up with one hand, their good sharp fishin' knife in the other, and they sayin', 'you jes set still, little catfish, we're jes going to gut ya.
Booth writes his friend knew he had lost the case because of a "genius metaphor."
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Re: Deep catfish
Powell's 2006 Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006) has no entry for "catfish", but one for "cat-throwing", where it was reported that at a 1761 session of the NC House, one Charles Cogdell, a spectator, threw a cat at House member Charles Robinson.