“I’ve been fishing the Mississippi ever since I was a really young kid,” Pheng Xiong told me. “I’d say probably like 8 or 9 years old.” He’s 28 now. That’s 20 years of tossing a line into some part of the Mississippi River, mostly between St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Lake Pepin.
His father took him fishing the first time, around Prescott, Wisconsin, where the St. Croix River merges with the Mississippi. As a kid, he and his father were angling for black and white crappies, white bass, and walleye. He learned how to scale, clean, and fillet fish during those years when most of what they caught ended up on the family dinner table.
White bass, in particular, is a popular fish species for Hmong people. “It has a flaky texture to it,” Pheng said, “and it’s a little softer than crappies.”
These days he’s more likely to fish in the Mississippi around St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he’s studying biology at St. Cloud State University. “Fishing the Mississippi, there is so much range where you can fish, depending on the depth level and all that stuff and what certain type of fish you want to fish for. In the Mississippi, there’s so many different types of fish.”
While he may be trying to land a walleye, catfish, or white bass south of the Twin Cities, around St. Cloud, it’s all about the smallmouth bass, muskie, and northern pike. “Me, personally, I’m not really a big eater of fish… I’m really big on game fish, fishing for them for fun. It’s all about the fight… It’s more like a stress reliever for me.”
Pheng is also a military veteran. He served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps and struggles at times with anxiety, depression, and PTSD related to his service. “Just fishing within the Mississippi River has helped me tremendously to be able to relax, to not think too much about the situations that happened to me earlier… It’s just a great stress reliever for me to do something like, to just get out there and do it, make you feel like you’re useful, just go out and fish and relax.”
Pheng is preparing for a career in conservation, hopefully one that involves fish. He’s getting plenty of real-world experience along the way. Two or three times a week, you can find him on a riverbank or maybe in a canoe or kayak on the Mississippi with a fishing line in the water and a smile on his face.
Thanks to 1_Mississippi for providing the funding and inspiration that made it possible for me to collect stories about #mymississippiriver!
