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Early Memories of Fishing
My earliest memory of fishing is with a cane pole, our one rusty fish hook, some twine from my Aunt's sewing box, and a dry stick for a float. I would love to be able to brag about all the fish I caught with that rig, but since this is a fishing story, I'll save the lies for more fertile ground. I rarely caught anything with that rig, but I did get a lot of "bites". The few unfortunates that I did catch were all definitely younger than I was, but to me they were treasures beyond compare. I thought my catches were huge until one day I landed at the edge of my fishing hole to see a water moccasin trying to swallow a fish 4 times the size of anything I had ever caught. Even after that experience whetted my appetite for bigger fish, I never did catch anything any bigger than I already had.
We had a really bad drought one summer, and the creek started drying up. My grown cousins gave me a "toe sack" and took me to the creek with them. They crawled around in that creek, reaching up under rocks and pulling fish out of their hidey holes. I was certain one of them was going to come up with that old water moccasin. If they had, they would have had a hard time finding me and my "toe sack". As it happened, we filled that sack half full and had a big fish fry that evening.
I abandoned my cane pole after My cousins taught me about "trot lines". We would tie a cord off to a green springy bush on one side of the creek and to another on the opposite bank. About every thre feet along that cord we tied a piece of twine about 2 feet long with a fish hook on the end. We would bait those hooks early in the morning, go about our chores and check on it around lunch time. We almost always had at least two and sometimes more fish that way. I'm not sure what kind of fish we were catching. Some were brim, and I remember hearing my cousins talk about bass and trout, but I'm not all that sure they knew either.
As I got older and bigger, I learned new methods of pursuing the scalies. We would rent a boat close to one of the many dams in Alabama, and motor up close to the dam. In the boat we would have a bushel basket full of old beer cans. These old cans had a short neck with a small mouth at the top. Each can had a piece of line of varying lengths with a hook. The line was attached to the can by tying it to a nail or screw or whatever, dropping it in the can and corking the can. When they opened the gates on the dam, we would motor out into the stream and dump the cans with baited hooks. Then we would run downstream and wait for them. As they came towards us, the ones with fish on them would be bobbing under and up. We just picked them up with their catch and go do it all over again. No doubt about the pedigree of these fish. Almost all catfish.
The world and fishing was totally different by the time I was grown. We were depleting our resources and fish that in years past had been supper, had to be thrown back. It didn't matter if they were mortally wounded in the catching, you still had to throw them back. I fully understand and agree with this practice. Fishermen being as they are, All fish would end up "mortally wounded".
Catfish today are a cash crop. They are farmed all over the south. A sideline to farming catfish arose in Alabama after Mr Peabody trashed the land looking for coal. When the coal people pulled out, they left behind thousands of deep pits in the ground that filled with water either from springs or rains and runoff. Enterprising folk would then lease these pits and stock them with catfish. They would rent out tackle and time at the "fishhing hole". Customers got to keep what they caught
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