James “Big Cat” Patterson prepares an offering of shad guts fit for a Mississippi River whiskerfish. Photo by James Joslin.

I've crossed the Mississippi River into our eastern neighbors of Tennessee and Mississippi many times at Memphis and Helena-West Helena, respectively.

I've heard its nicknames -- a list almost as long as its length (2,300 to more than 2,500 miles, depending on the source cited) from its headwaters at Lake Itasca in northwestern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico not too far from New Orleans.

I've even read the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and the Native American tribes who, as legends have it, pulled catfish in excess of 6 feet long from its waters.

So, I feel as if I know a little something about the Mississippi River.

But there's a difference between knowing about the Mississippi and knowing the Mississippi.

Enter James "Big Cat" Patterson, owner/operator of Mississippi River Guide Service, www.bigcatfishing. com. He's fished these waters, mainly for catfish, for decades. In fact, it was he who got his father started fishing after pestering the elder Patterson, a barber, to stop cutting hair and start cutting bait so they could go catch some cats.

So when you begin to list the names of Mississippi River islands and bars that might hold some good catfish, it seems as if Patterson has fished at or near any you could mention.

There's Loosahatchie Bar, Redman Point Bar, Hatchie Towhead, Island No. 30, Forked Deer Island and Island No. 21 that can be found above the Interstate 40 bridge connecting West Memphis and Memphis and below the southern tip of the Missouri bootheel.

Downstream from there are Cat Island and Rabbit Island, near Tunica. Or Prairie Point Towhead, just upriver from Helena-West Helena. Or Island No. 63, just downriver from this historic Arkansas Delta cradle of blues.

Motoring farther toward the Gulf of Mexico, we find Cessions Towhead near the famously deer-rich Mozart deer camp adjacent to the White River National Wildlife Refuge.

We then end our trip down the Mighty Mississippi by boating past Choctaw Bar Island No. 78, now part of an 8,300-acre wildlife management area under the ownership and management of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Choctaw's roughly even in latitude with Arkansas City, while, last, Kentucky Bend Bar is found along the Arkansas border just below Lake Village.

But the names of these locations are less important that the whereabouts of the fish at any given time, Patterson explained recently.

HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
"On this river, fishing can be good here this year," he said, pointing around toward the Memphis skyline, "but it may not be good next year. In fact, it can be good one day and not the next."