BALTIMORE — Derrick “Rick” Jones can’t remember a time when he didn’t love catfish — the moist, tender flesh when it’s cooked right, the mild, slightly sweet flavor and the crunch of a proper cornmeal crust when it’s fried.

Such sensations have given Jones, a Costco employee and part-time real estate agent, little tastes of heaven for most of his 33 years. But it wasn’t until about four years ago that he realized he could catch the whiskered creatures himself — allowing him not just to savor them but also to share them, along with a generous helping of protein, with others.

Jones, now a fanatical fisherman, reels in two dozen or more of the bottom-dwelling beauties on a good outing — and delivers at least half to area food pantries, where organizers say the unusual donations have become some of their most sought-after offerings.

“The way I look at it, I love catching it, I love to fillet it and clean it — why not give it away?” says the man better known to anglers as Catfish Rick.

Jones grew up in a culture of service. His parents assembled care packages for military personnel and collected food for local food banks, involving their son in both efforts. By elementary school, he was shoveling elderly neighbors’ driveways, cutting their grass and volunteering at community pantries.

“They tried to pay me, but no,” Jones says of the folks who lived next door. “Some things you just do from the heart.”

That impulse to contribute followed him as he built a future of his own. While majoring in design at Towson University, he created flyers for student organizations and helped promote positive campus events. After graduating in 2015, he landed a full-time job in Costco’s bakery department and earned his real estate license on the side.

Under yet another moniker, Rick the Realtor, he focuses on prospective first-time homebuyers and occasionally hosts free home-buying seminars. He chose that specialty because he knows from experience how baffling the home-buying process can be.

He and his wife, Amani, haven’t found their own dream home yet, but they’re saving for one — and have learned plenty about how to proceed.

“One thing I’ve learned in life — once you learn something, teach it to the next person,” he says. “That’s just how I grew up. As the old proverb says, ‘Each one, teach one.’ ”

Through it all, one appetite remained constant: Jones loved those freshwater fish — their mild taste, their unusual appearance and the countless ways they could be prepared. But it wasn’t until he overheard some strangers talking about the abundance of catfish in Maryland that he realized he could do more than buy, fry and gobble them up.

“The same catfish we buy in the store, I can catch myself?” he remembers thinking. “I got a fishing rod that day. I heard about places to fish. Once I caught my first catfish, that was it.”

Now, whenever he has time, Jones heads out early, armed with his PENN Fierce rod-and-reel combo, and fishes the lakes, ponds, rivers and streams between Havre de Grace and Annapolis for his favorite quarry.

Part of what he loves is the peacefulness of the settings — “how calm it is, the sound of the waves hitting the rocks, the trees flowing in the wind,” he says — but part is certainly about the catch.

Once in a great while, he comes up empty. On his best outing, he reeled in 31. Most days, at least a few take the shrimp or smaller fish he uses as bait.

“If I could fish all day, every day and night, I would,” he says.

Myesha Samples certainly wishes he could. Samples, the longtime director of a food pantry at Montebello Elementary School, learned through Facebook three years ago about “this crazy guy” who caught catfish, cleaned and packaged them, and donated them to families in need.

She reached out and soon found herself meeting “this incredibly giving person.”

Jones arrived with about 50 pounds of fresh catfish neatly divided among freezer bags. He chatted with pantry patrons before leaving — and has returned with similar deliveries every week or two ever since. The amount depends on the success of his latest outing.

“How often can you get fresh fish at a food pantry? Really never,” says Samples, who freezes the fish when it arrives and distributes it days later. “He’ll cut it up into little catfish nuggets, and they’re our most popular item.

“The best part is he doesn’t charge the families. They don’t pay anything. It’s no fee. We have not paid him a dime! He’s really something.”

Jones will soon begin delivering to Robert W. Coleman Elementary School, where Samples now works.

Christine Burgess, president of My Caring Hands, an assisted-living home in eastern Baltimore County, tells a similar story. Jones has been delivering fresh-caught catfish there for three years, and Burgess says he was so generous with the fare at first that she had to tell him to come in a little less often.

“The elderly are crazy about his fish, especially when they have ketchup to put on the catfish nuggets,” she says. “And he doesn’t just drop it off. He’ll come in and speak to everybody. He’s always smiling. You’ll never see him without a smile on his face.”

For now, Jones keeps working, selling homes when he can and heading for the water when time allows. Some of what he catches will land on his own table. Much of it continues to land on someone else’s.

“It makes me feel good to do something that allows me to give back,” he says.

____

©2026 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.