Fishing Follies with My Father

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me was the knowledge and skill to fish. Now that I am a father, stepfather and uncle I am fully aware of the nightmare it is to go fishing with kids. I think back and it makes me realize that my father has the patience of a monk.

He never lost his patience with me, well almost never.

One of my earliest memories is when I was 4, my father and I were fishing down at the pond in the backyard. Fishing is a stretch, I had a kids fishing pole with no reel on it and my dad had fastened a piece of fishing line to it and tied a rubber worm with no hook on the end. He said I was as happy as a lark just slapping the worm onto the water.

He wasn’t catching anything because I was making all that racket. In the south we have a saying,

“you ain’t hold’n your mouth right.”

This is what an experienced fisherman tells someone who isn’t catching any. I must have been holding my mouth right because low and behold I caught a nice little largemouth bass. My dad says he still doesn’t know how I managed to catch that fish.

From that moment on I was hooked, pun intended.

Our fishing adventures were pretty mundane until we joined the hunting and fishing camp. We live right on the cusp of the Mighty Mississippi River. All along the river are alluvial floodplains.

Rednecks just call them bottoms. Swamp lands that flood annually.

Wild is an understatement.

The creatures witnessed in that swamp through the years were amazing. Alligators three times the length of an average adult man, literal truck loads of fish pulled from nets, enormous deer, bald eagles, rattlesnakes twice my teenage length, all existing in the mysterious dusty land where the flood lines are marked on every tree.

Every year the river rises from the northern snow melts and the entire camp is flooded. All the buildings are built on stilts.

I have so many outdoor stories to tell from this place. It was an integral part of my childhood.

One in particular is the impetus for this story.

Our shiny new boat

The Old River Peddler is a classified newspaper you can pick up at a gas station around my hometown of Natchez. Before Ebay, Craigslist, and now Facebook if you wanted to purchase something used you needed to pick up one of these and look through it.

I loved searching for boats. My dad and I were always shopping for a boat. I didn’t know how broke we were. There’s an old saying,

“The two best days in a boat owners life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.”

We never kept one long enough. Maybe they needed something more important, like keeping the lights on or paying for our catholic school tuition.

No discount for degenerate protestants.

I digress.

With the crisp new copy of the Peddler I shopped as my dad drove us to our next destination.

One day one one of these boats caught my eye. I showed it to dad. It was a 14 foot aluminum boat with a 20 hp Evinrude. Carpeted throughout with a deck on the front. Mounted on that deck was a foot controlled trolling motor.

That’s fancy.

We owned basic aluminum boats with the built in benches and a motor you attached once it was in the water. Usually a trolling motor poor folks can’t afford those snazzy outboards.

I showed my dad and he was impressed.

Only $800!

In the late 90’s $800 was more than it is today, but still not so expensive that it would be impossible for me and him to convince mom to splurge.

It worked, she agreed. It had been a few years since we sold our last boat and I think she missed the occasional outing.

I remember Friday afternoon well. He picked me up from school and we went to an ATM. He withdrew the $800 dollars and we set out to buy our fancy new-to-us boat.

It was across the river about an hour away in Louisiana. Like a beacon in the front yard of its owners home, there it was.

Every house in the south is a used car, boat, and or ATV lot at some point and this was that point for them.

I was too young to take part in the negotiations so I walked out to the boat and gushed over it.

I could see why it was only $800 once up-close. The shiny silver was painted and the carpet looked nice but it looked like a back yard job.

The trolling motor looked like it was made by Edison at GE around the time of the lightbulb’s inception and the Evinrude on the transom was a little long in the tooth.

Nothing was going to waver our love for our new boat.

The owner showed us the motor, which fired right up and he demonstrated the trolling motors functionality.

Dad shook his hand, gave him the money and we hooked it to the old Blue Bronco 2 and were off.

That night we backed it into the carport so we could sit on the swing and swoon.

It was a beauty.

So excited about our new boat we made plans to head to the fishing camp.

The maiden voyage

The next morning we set off.

The journey to the camp is a magical one. Deep down old country roads that slowly turn from pavement to gravel to eventually just silt. The thick forests and kudzu lined gullies eventually drop out and you descend into the swamp lands.

More details of Rodney, MS will have to come in future stories because this story needs to stay on topic.

We get to the fishing hole and its a good time of the year for it. 7 or 8 other trucks with trailers are parked near the ramp.

Always a good sign the fish are biting.

The fishing hole, called Gumridge shoot is destined to turn into oxbow lakes once the river completely cuts it off. For now and the next few thousand years it will remain connected to the river. The river’s rise and fall dictates the directional flow of the shoot.

This makes for incredible fishing.

Our new boat performs admirably. My father and I, meh. We were never great fishermen. We loved it as much as the next guy but they could be right next to us pulling fish out of the lake left and right and we would be sitting there without a bite.

Guess we never held our mouth right.

We caught a few that day and planned for one more day of fishing.

From dusk till dawn

Just before dark everyone was securing their boats on the shore and heading back to the camp.

We followed suit, resting the bow of our nice new boat on the shore next to the others and heading back to the camp to fry up the day’s catch and drink around the barrel fire.

We received a few compliments, from other fishermen, about our boat that night. Everyone thought it was a great value.

$800 for a boat with a carpeted deck, that’s steal.

The evening debauchery eventually died out and we settled in to sleep to prepare for another great day of fishing.

Not only titans

The next morning came and we eagerly drove the old bronco to the fishing hole.

The road was elevated and you couldn’t see the boats until you drove right up on them. As we turned the corner on the dusty track we noticed a handful of guys standing on the bank just looking down at the boats.

We didn’t think anything of it and kept approaching.

Once we pulled up alongside we saw what they were looking at. A long line of boats resting on the shore except for one.

In the place where we left our boat was that nice front seat sticking up out of the duckweed like an over ambitious lily pad from the now submerged deck of our new boat. All our fishing gear was spread out in eyesight amongst the cyprus trees.

Turns out the transom had a slight leak just above the water line and when we rested the boat on the shore the leak started trickling in.