All Fishermen are liars,
except for me and you...
and I wonder about you!!!
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All Fishermen are liars, except for me and you...
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Hung me a real lunker the other day. Brother, I mean this bass was a doozy! I had the drag set, but was only able to play this bad boy for a couple of minutes before the gears on my trusty ole Zebco 33 burned up. It was only fate that my 60's era fiberglass Snoopy pole was hangin' together. Gotta think quick...
I wrapped what little line I had left around one of the cleats on the boat. Well, the bass jerked the boat, the boat lunged forward, and I rolled off the back of the boat. I was able to hang on to my rod, but I sure thought I was gonna lose that fish. Suddenly, a genuine piece of luck fell my way when Lulu (that's what I call her) scrubbed a stump and knocked off a scale. It was just big enough for me to use as a boogie board.
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Here I was on my new boogie board and we were picking up speed real fast. My cheeks were flappin' in the breeze like a dog's lips hanging out of a pickup window, and the gnats hittin' me in the face were a real bummer, but I didn't realize just how fast we were going until I saw the paint start to melt and peel off my boat. Did you know that the aerodynamics of a john boat are such that as one approaches the speed of sound, moisture in the air will compress and leave a vapor trail, sort of like a jet engine at high altitude? I didn't know it. Anyway...
Lulu was just about to turn me into a kite and I was going airborne when luck came my way again. Lulu swam into a shallow and had to turn back toward the deep end of the pond. That moment of time was all I needed to jump back into the boat and shove the trolling motor into full reverse! And finally, after a couple of hours, Lulu was tired and I was able to land her.
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Now, for all you little tykes out there that want to become a fisherman like me, there's a lesson here. Always, ALWAYS backboat a buddy when you go fishing. If I had done this, when Lulu jerked the boat, I'd have just knocked my buddy out instead of getting wet myself.
I'd like to add that we had a great Sunday afternoon fish fry for Reidsville, and the greater Tattnall County, GA area... Baptists and Methodists were both welcome. And, finally, Debbie (my wife) has started her own business; "Debbie's Fish Scale Boogie Boards and Used Lures." Ya'll come on by and tell us your fishin' stories.
Black water stained with tannic acid released by ages old leaves, but spring fed and clean; farm ponds rarely fished, but full of 'em!!! It's how I grew up. When I was little, we would visit my grandparents in Reidsville, GA. Of course, we would have the planned trips where Papa, Dad, Larry and I would all go fishing; sometimes Mom would go too. Papa and Dad would get the boat while Larry and I got experience in bank fishing. We always went looking for bass, but we'd clean and cook whatever we caught.
Papa lived within walking distance (even for a little boy) of three ponds... I'd get up real early and leave Mom and Dad a note telling them I had "gone fishing." It was up to them to figure out which of the three ponds I was at. Of course, it wasn't terribly hard, as all of the ponds were within a half mile of each other and all Dad had to do was drive by them to see if I was on the bank with pole (and on a few occasions, fish) in hand.
If I have a regret as an adult, it's that my kids never knew that kind of freedom. If I have a regret as a father, it's that I didn't take them fishing more often.
We were fishing on the outskirts of Reidsville, GA, in a pond behind Mr. Curry's house. Actually, there are two ponds and the road leading to them serves to split the two, and also as the dam on the backside of the bigger pond that we normally fished in. Dad says he remembers the pond being there when he was a kid, so it's an old pond.
The pond is spring fed and constantly dumps water down the spillway. On the back side of the dam, the spillway empties into a creek and eventually into Brazels creek. Over the years, the water coming through there had washed a pretty good fishing hole out of the earth, and small bream and catfish would swim up from Brazel's creek and get trapped in that little hole. Mr. Curry had poured a couple of concrete supports and put some 2x12's across them so that Mrs. Curry could fish there. That's the hole I'd fish while Dad and Papa were in the boat up in the pond, and I skunked both of them on more than one occasion.
Anyway, I must have been about eight years old on this particular day. We had been there for several hours and I had a great stringer of fish for dinner that night, but I had fished out the hole and was down to feeding crickets to the minnows. Low and behold, swimming up the creek towards my spot was about a three foot cottonmouth. I yanked up my stringer, baited up a small bream, and chucked that bad boy about three inches in front of Mr. Fang's nose! He started chomping down on some fresh fish and a couple of minutes later, I set the hook.
"Daaaad." "DAAAAAD." "DAAAAAAAAAAD, I got a snake on my line."
As luck would have it, Dad and I topped our respective sides of the dam at about the same time, and at the same spot. His reaction was instantaneous and decisive!!! He started running... so I started chasing him up and down the dam, over and over again. Papa had stayed in the boat, but I thought he was going to roll out of it from laughing so hard. One of the biggest mistakes I had made in my young life up to that point was to let Dad get that snake. He killed it, and then he wore me out!!!
The moral of the story, you ask? Never, EVER chase your dad with a venomous snake unless you're old enough to outrun him and don't ever have to go home again.
I was in the Navy and had just gotten stationed in Jacksonville, FL and had decided to go up to see Mom and Dad for the weekend. Dad and I decided fish for dinner sounded mighty tasty, but it was getting late and we were under a time crunch. So, we grabbed a couple of poles and some cricket boxes.
We headed over to Mrs. Cheney's pond; it has a washout behind the spillway very similar to the one behind Mr. Curry's pond, and I'd caught a mess of fish every time I'd ever fished down there. On the backside of the dam, the spillway chute is about a two foot diameter galvanized pipe and I'd just straddle it and throw out into the pool and catch fish.
Dad had never been back there with me, but he had on some coveralls and figured he could brave the briars and sneak around to the back side of the pool to fish there. It wasn't long before he had himself a little assembly line going. He had unzipped his coveralls to about his waist and stuck the butt of his cane pole in the little "v." Then, he'd lay the front of the pole on some brush in front of him to balance the pole. As he caught fish, he'd slip them onto the stringer guide, slip the guide back in his pocket, bait up and then throw back out. He really wasn't paying attention to the fish he had already caught.
I was watching my cork... "Oh, no you don't you @$#!%^#$#. I said NO *^%$#^%$!!!" Suddenly, Dad has my attention. Now, here's this 50 something man yelling obscenities in the general direction of his feet doing the middle age moon walk that I'm quite certain would have become a geriatric dance craze if only others would have seen it. He's also whipped that cane pole around and is swatting at whatever it is on the ground that he's backing away from at full speed.
Turns out that he had gotten so wrapped up in catching fish that he never noticed the full grown cottonmouth laying across his foot munchin' on one of the fish on his stringer. The snake had been there long enough to swallow one and was working on a second and now had the stringer caught in his throat. Of course, the stringer guide is in Dad's pocket, so as he's backing up trying to get away from the snake, he's dragging the snake with him.
Now, I've gotten a full dose of what Papa had thought was so funny 15 years earlier as I was chasing Dad up and down the dam with one. It's no exaggeration when I tell ya that I'm about to roll off my pipe from laughter.
Well, he's managed to back up all the way to the top of the dam before he realizes that he's the one causing the snake to keep "coming after him." He finally gets the stringer guide out of his pocket and puts a little space between him and that cottonmouth! The weight of the fish on Dad's stringer keeps the snake for getting too far away and he killed it. But, Dad suddenly declares that he's "tired" of fishing for the day.
We went home with two nice stringers of fish, one of which had a cottonmouth head fanged into it... We didn't eat that one.
Dad is one of three surviving heirs to a 300 acre farm on the outskirts of Reidsville. Passed on in a will from the 1930's, legal stuff, pine trees, mumbo-jumbo, income for Billy, yada-yada, etc,... Anyway, none of the heirs own the farm, but Dad's the only one still living in Reidsville and he has free run of the place for hunting and fishing. It has three very old ponds on it, one of which we named Martelle's pond. Martelle, my daughter, has no fanfare associated with her first fish story. That's a shame because she would just die from having it posted on the web, and everyone knows that the only true calling of parents is to embarrass their kids.
Eric (my son), on the otherhand, had his first fishing trip here. He was in transition from Pampers to Pull-ups, so he must have been around two years old, or maybe just a shade younger. We had all gone out to Martelle's pond for a little family fishing. Debbie had stayed at the house for some reason, but Mom, Dad, Martelle, Eric and I were all there.
I was throwin' a little Johnson's Beetle Spin trying to pick up a crappie or two. Dad was baiting crickets for Martelle, and she was catching some little bream. Dad was taking her fish off the hook for her. Mom was sitting on the bank and had an old cane pole; she was catching some small ones right along. Eric was just wandering around behind us and decided he'd come see what all this fishing fuss was about.
He slipped up behind his Granny at just about the same time she pulled a small bream out of the water. A limber pole, a wiggling fish, a little boy, and... WWWWAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! Screaming at the top of his lungs, he went running just as fast as his little legs would carry him up the bank! We finally convinced him it was ok, that the fish wouldn't hurt him. Martelle even helped by walking up to it and touching it. "See? It's ok, Eric."
Eric waddles his little Pull-ups stuffed butt back down the bank and reached out to touch it. The instant his finger touched it, the fish started wiggling again... WWWWAAAAAHHHHHHHHH, and back up the bank he went. Eric was done fishing for the day!
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From my earliest days, whenever a storm would come up, we'd get off the water. Now, in retrospect, it's a reasonable course of action... even among the stumps, you in the boat are typically the high spot on the water and just became a lightning rod. And, heading for the shore and the safety of the trees only puts you close to higher lightning rods.
I've been using graphite rods for a while now. Graphite rods are made of lots and lots of strands of graphite bonded together. They have some advantages over the old glass (fiberglass) rods of yesteryear. They're lighter, stronger, and a lot more sensitive. But, the old glass rods had one BIG advantage over graphite... they didn't conduct electricity!
The picture above came to me in a company safety bulletin email. I don't know where it came from originally, when or where the picture was taken, who it belonged to, or who made the rod, but the results would be fairly common for any man made graphite rod and a God made lightning bolt!!! So, if you're on the water and you hear thunder, or see lightning in the distance, put your graphite rods away fast, and go hide in the car til the storm passes.
Circa 1985: Dad and I are back out at Mr. Curry's pond. We had been there a couple of hours and pretty much fished the entire back side of the pond... no luck, no lunkers. Fact is that we had only hung one. It was a nice fish, but seeing how we had only caught the one, we threw her back.
We had just started making our way around the front side of pond when something caught my eye. I had no idea what it was, but every time I looked that way, it nagged at me. Against all the shades of green, brown, and black, hot pink was sticking out like the proverbial "sore thumb." Slowly, but surely, we were getting closer as we continued working the pond.
We finally got close enough for me to figure out what it was. Someone had been doing some bank fishing with a hot pink plastic frog and stump hung it far enough out that he couldn't get it back. Losing a lure on occasion is just part of fishing, but I didn't mind it too much this time as I was the one gainin' a lure. "Hey Dad, ease up to that frog on the stump over there and let me get it."
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"Cool. Got me a plastic frog" I said.
"I don't know, you got it from my boat. Seems like it's my lure."
"Dad! You didn't even see it. My lure."
"Well, you sure couldn't have gotten it without me! My lure."
"When we get home, I'm tellin' Mom."
Now, bass have some of the best visual color acuity known to man. Some studies (here or here) suggest that their color perception is as much as five times greater than humans. What I don't understand is, armed with this knowledge, how some bait company fisheries science guy came up with this color pattern, because it certainly didn't resemble anything a bass would have found to eat in nature. Truth is that no self-respecting bass would have hit this thing in this hideous color of pink anyway. None of that mattered though. By the time we got home...
"My lure!"
"Un-uh. My lure!!"
And so it continued.
Dad was pretty convinced it was his lure, and I was pretty convinced he was wrong. Back at the house, Mom and Debbie were pretty convinced that both of us were loony. Finally, our weekend ended and we had to go home. As we were leaving, I blew the horn and made this big production of pointing to my truck's dash where the lure sat in full view. I had the lure. He knew it. That was enough for me. When I got it home, I proudly displayed it in my "Ode to Fishermen" fishing bathroom.
It wasn't too long before Mom and Dad came for a weekend of fun and relaxation in sunny Florida. It was a nice visit and uneventful for the most part, until they were in the car packed to leave. As Dad began to pull out, he made it a point to blow the horn as he was putting his stolen trophy on the dash. Sure enough, he was makin' off with my lure. The next time up to Reidsville, there it sat proudly in the center hole of his coffee cup rack.
And so its gone for over 20 years now. It's always a big production with lots of horn blowing, lots of arm waving pointing to an ugly lure. He takes the lure from my house, and next trip up, I take it back. Neither of us have ever fished this lure, or even had the desire. It's really an ugly lure. But, that's never stopped him from stealing it, or me from getting it back and returning it to its rightful place.
I've been using Berkley Lighting rods since they came on the market. Lightning rods are made of IM6 graphite and have some advantages over the old glass rods of the 60's that I grew up with. They're lighter, more sensitive, and considerably stronger. As a fisherman, I have a lot of faith in the rods that they won't let me down when I'm on the water. But...
It's early spring. Dad and I are fishing about a 12 acre, spring fed pond that belongs to one of Dad's long time farmer buddies. The pond has two distinct halves; the deep end up next to the dam is around 30 feet deep and has an eight inch irrigation pipe in it. The back half of the pond ranges from about 18 inches to four feet deep and is used as a watering hole for cows in the pasture. An old shanty anchored to the bank sticks out about 15 feet into the edge of the pond. We usually slip the boat in on the dam side of the pond house and work our way around it into the shallows before heading into the deeper water.
I had been throwing a perch pattern Smithwick Devil's Horse for about 45 minutes, and having only moderate success. I turned around threw out into the middle of the shallows, popped that plug about twice, and WAMPASWOOSH!
"Got me a lunker, Dad" as I'm setting the hook. There's a lot of stumps and millfoil in the shallow end of this pond and I'm playin' her hard. There is no sight more fun to witness than the Field and Stream cover as it comes to life; rod tip bent with purple monofilament in the bright sun leading to a largemouth as she dances on top of the water. I know I have to get her back down in the water or she'll spit my bait out.
As I'm cranking back on the rod, it happened. The reel seat gave way and slides up the rod until it hits the first line guide. Then the reel just sort of flips up and starts dangling in the air. That foot of slack now in my line is all my lunker needs... In slow motion, she eases up to the top, opens that huge mouth, shakes her head about twice, and I see that one foot arc my plug makes as it "plops" back in the water. And, it was completely lunker free!
Not another human besides us within a mile of the place, but I hear a voice in back of me sayin' "stings, don't it boy."
"Yeah, Dad, it does." And ten years later, it still stings.
Another weekend rolled around and I decided to run up to Reidsville for some fishing. When I got to the house, Mom was the only one home.
"Where's Dad?"
"He's gone fishin with Russell."
"Where'd they go?"
"Oh, there out at Eli's pond; the one behind his house."
"Cool. I'm gonna run out there and wet a line real quick. Be
back in a little while, Mom."
Well, I hop in the truck and run out to where the are. Sure enough, when I get far enough down the pond road, I see Dad's truck, and as I pull up just a little more, I see Dad and Padre (more on him a little later) out in the boat tossin' lures. We exchange our "Hey, how are ya's" and I mention that I'm going to walk around and toss a lure of my own.
Ok, so, here I am back on the now infamous dam at Mr. Curry's pond. I'm standing about two feet from the spillway which offers a small clearing where I can throw out and pop a topwater. I'm using an old Arbogast Hula Popper, which when worked right, makes a gurgling/ploping noise across the top of the water. On the very first throw...
plop, gurgle, plop-plop, gurgle-plop
"Hey son, mumble mumble mumble mumble."
gurgle, plop-plop, plop, gurgle-plop
"What? Can't hear ya over the spillway."
gurgle, plop-plop, gurgle-plop, plop
Watch out for the wasp nest!
WAMPASWOOSH
Set the hook, point the rod tip down... Oh man, got me a lunker! Well, as I lowered that rod, I brushed the tip of it against the limb that held the wasp nest. They started buzzin' and they didn't seem all that happy. "YOWWWW!!!" I got popped about seven or eight times before I could jump in the pond and get them off me. By the time I could swim down to a less inhabited, less dangerous area of the bank, I was already starting to "puff" up. To add a little insult to injury, Dad got the boat over to where I had thrown my rod on the bank, and reeled my lunker in and claimed it as his own.
I guess the swelling continued, or at least Dad seemed a little concerned, so he suggested I run down to the Tattnall Memorial hospital for an evaluation. Fifteen minutes of paperwork, three minutes in an ER holding area, one nurse with one shot of Benadryl, and the bill was what I got for that trouble.
I got in the wasp nest, Dad got my fish, Mom started calling me "Mr. Puffy," and it only cost me $250.00. Stung four times in one day... I hate that darn dam!!!
Russell Rhoden was one of four brothers that inherited three news papers from their father that were started back in the late 1800s. I don't know the history on the other brothers or the other papers, but Russell owned and operated the Tattnall Journal, the local paper in Reidsville, from long before I was born until he passed away.
R.P. Balkam was appointed as Warden of the Georgia State Prison in the mid 1950's. R.P. maintained that post until late 1970's when Georgia politics and Governer elect Lester Maddox caused him to retire. Among other perks, R.P. got free run of all the ponds on the prison property, but had one that was the labeled as Warden's pond that no one fished except him and his guests.
Papa, Russell, and R.P. were all friends from their boyhood stretching back to the early 1920s, and all had maintained friendships all of their lives. Needless to say, both Russell and R.P. had known me since the day I was born. For some reason, Russell had always called me Pedro, and I called him Padre.
Papa and Padre were fishing buddies. Whenever we were in town, Papa and Dad were fishing buddies. When Papa died in early 1972, we still lived in Atlanta, but we began making frequent trips down to Reidsville to look in on my grandmother. Well, Dad and Padre became fishing buddies, and whenever we were in town, they would try to work in a fishing trip, and this particular weekend was no different. Padre had called R.P. and arranged for us to go out and have some fun in the Warden's pond. So, we loaded up the boat and were off.
The Warden's pond is about 10 acres and has a deep channel running down the center of it. It was around July or August, and Dad and Padre had figured out that there were some really big fish in that channel where the water was cooler. They would bait up a couple of shiners on and float down that channel, catch a six to eight pounder, paddle back up and repeat.
I was stuck fishing from the dock, and I was bored to tears. I ran back up to the truck and grabbed about three more cane poles, so I had about five total, all baited up and leaned up against the dock rail. I was ever so hopeful that at least one of them would get some action. Well, one did, and I picked up the pole and played a bream that must have weighed at least an ounce or two.
Just as I'm tossin' that bad boy back in the water, I hear a sound. Have you ever the sound the knobs on a cane pole make as they're dragged across a dock rail? Well, it sounded kind of like that. As I looked around, I see the last couple of knobs making a sound, and then my cane pole headed out to deep water. I yell across the water...
"Hey, Padre, grab my pole.
"What pole?"
"My cane pole. A fish dragged it off the dock. Grab my pole!"
"If I grab it, it's my pole. And, it'll be my fish!!!"
Did you know that Padre is spanish for father? Spanish speaking Catholics call priests Padre all the time. I baited the hook, I fetched the pole, shoot, I even yelled for him to grab it out of the water, and the man stole and claimed my 12 lb. catfish. Some Padre he turned out to be.
Debbie's sister, Leslie, and her husband John had moved to Atlanta. While they were moving in to their new house up there, Debbie and I were keeping their dog Cocoa for them. We finally got the call that they were settled in and they wanted to get Cocoa back. We gave them directions to Mom and Dad's house in Reidsville, and arranged to meet them there on Saturday morning.
Dad and I were shootin' the breeze and talking about fishing, and John suggested that if we knew of a place, maybe we could go. So, Dad called Mr. Clark, his farmer buddy. We loaded up the truck and headed out. We were fishing another of his farm ponds; a different pond, but same basic configuration... spring fed with half of it a shallow wading pool for cows in the pasture and a much deeper half with an eight inch irrigation pipe for his fields. Dad told us to get in the boat and he'd just cast a few from the bank.
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I was going to paddle John around the pond and maybe cast a few, but mostly just entertain him. I asked him if he wanted me to tie a lure on for him and he explained that his Grandpa had taught him to fish when he was little. Soon, I'd learn that he must have been real little. I offered up four or five known lunker latchers, and the one he grabbed to tie on was a Heddon Lucky 13.
First cast, nothing. Second cast, nothing. Third cast, he popped about five or six times, and sure enough, he set the hook... or at least he reared back to set it. He darn near fell out of the boat when he shifted all his weight with nothing to slow down all that torque he had put on the rod. Out in the pond, there's a two pounder jumping. On about the third jump, it threw the plug out. "I guess the line broke. We'll pick it up out of the water in a few minutes when we get the boat over by it."
He figured after only three casts, the old Heddon's must be something special and asked if I had another one. I told him "yeah... Want me to tie it on for ya?" "Nah, I know how." So, I handed it to him, and he tied it on.
John reared back to make his next cast and whipped the rod forward. The freshly tied, completly unattached Lucky 13 goes zinging backwards past my head and he almost throws the now terribly unbalanced rod right in the pond. I fetch the first AND the second lure out of the water. I tied the third (which was actually the first) lure on and we didn't lose it a single time for the rest of the day.
Anyway, we spent the next few hours going around the edge of the pond. We could have made it around a little quicker but John went on several squirrel fishing expeditions that caused us to go on a few lure fetchin' missions. John hung a lot of fish. He even managed to land a few. He couldn't miss them all with three sets of treble (folks, that's nine in all) hooks attached to the plug, but God knows he tried.
We finally made it back to within earshot of Dad. Truth of the matter is we had about four or five fish in the cooler; a couple of yearlings and a few two pounders. But, every fisherman knows that you never, EVER brag until you can either hide your shame or claim your prize. The fish you caught today are always bigger three years later!
"How'd you boys do?"
"Ok, I guess" I said. "Didn't set 'em on fire."
John chimed in "Oh, we caught a bunch. And, they're huge!"
"John" I said, "don't go bragging to that old man. He'll stand right
there on that bank and embarrass you."
"No way he out fished us."
"Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you."
We pulled the boat up to the bank and got out and streched a little.
"Well, let me see how you boys did."
"Like I said Dad, we only caught a couple..."
"We caught a ton of 'em" John said.
John flings open the cooler and Dad says "Not bad. Son, go get my stringer."
I'll never forget it as long as I live. I walked down to the bank and pulled up his stringer. He had eleven fish. Every single one was over eight pounds. We all ate fish for dinner that night, but John preferred the crow he had to eat.
Listed below are some of my best one line lies, er... uh... true tales.