FISHING WITH TUT

READY TO GO FISHING

A FUN FILLED TRIP FISHING WITH TUT

I AM READY TO 

GO FISHING 

PAW-PAW

The first photo is of my great grandson, Caden, standing in my Tracker bass rig.  The boat has been in storage for four years and I had given up ever returning to fishing as one of my favorite pastimes.  With the prompting of Caden and his father, I decided to get the boat out of storage and give the young man the same opportunities I had as I was growing up.

The second photo is myself and my brother, Richard, on a fishing trip with our grandfather "Tut".  I have so many great memories of Tut and the fishing trips he took us on.  People said he had the patience of Job and I can certainly go along with that.  He was one of those fisherman that could stay on the water all day if the fish were biting or not.  But, when he had his grandchildren along on the fishing trip he would always have time to bait our hooks and show us just where to drop the line in to catch a good one. He had the uncanny ability to find fish no matter how bad the weather or water conditions were and he taught me many of the secrets that I used as I continued to love fishing as I grew to be an adult.

It was an exciting day for us when he took us on a fishing trip.  We would rise very early in the morning, hook up the boat to the car, load all of the fishing gear in the car, and head out for DarBonne, Corney Creek, Corney Lake or on a special trip, Alabama Landing.  On the way, we would always stop by the icehouse to pick up some ice for our drinks and to keep the fish cold because we knew it would be a hot day on the lake.  Tut did not have a fancy fishing rig but took his aluminum boat or rented one if he needed an outboard motor.  In 1955, he bought a 5-1/2 horsepower Johnson outboard motor and we thought we were in high cotton.  On many trips, the only means of moving the boat was wooden paddles.  I can still remember him sitting in the front of the boat and using a short paddle to scull the boat and put us in just the right position to get our bait into the right place to catch a “big one.”

Once we had reached the halfway point, Tut would turn the boat around and we would began to make our way back to the landing, fishing all of the way.  After a hard day of fishing, we would load everything back in the car and head back home.  However, the day was not over.  When we got home we had to clean all of the fish that we caught.  Later when we set down to a supper of fried fish that our grandmother “Dell” had cooked we knew it was all worthwhile.  The photo below shows the results of a typical day spent fishing with Tut.

A SUCCESSFUL FISHING TRIP

 Hopefully, I will be able to share these same type of times with my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and leave memories with them of some of "the way things were."

AN UNUSUAL LIVE FISH BAIT

A

FORGOTTEN

FISH

BAIT

Last week we were playing with the grand children in our back yard and noticed some wasps flying around one of our bushes.  On closer inspection I found a small wasp nest and with a quick spray of wasp and hornet spray had the situation under control.  I retrieved the nest and as I was explaining  how the nest was constructed and the larva inside the nest were actually baby wasp, my mind went back to many times that I went fishing with my grandfather "Tut".

One of my grandfather's favorite bream fish bait was the small larva from wasp nests.  This was an exceptional bait when the Ouachita River was out of its banks and the pecan tree worms would begin to fall into the flood waters.  Baiting your hook with one of these tender morsels would guarantee that the float would go under immediately and you would have a hand sized bream on your line.

Now, gathering and using this type bait was quite a challenge, especially for a youngster like me.  The day before we were to go fishing or sometimes on the way fishing, my grandfather would locate a large wasp nest and knock the nest down.  This was known as "robbing the wasp nest" and I am not sure how he accomplished this without getting stung many times.  He would then put the nest into a large paper bag and tie the top closed.  Sometimes in the car on the way to the fishing spot the wasp would hatch out and you could hear them flying around in the bag.  Once at the river we would load all of our gear, including the wasp nest bag, into the boat and head out for a day of fishing.  When we needed some bait for our hook we would open the bag and reach in and get one of the wasp larva from a compartment in the nest.  This was done as wasps were flying out of the bag, and was a very uncomfortable situation for me but I never remember anyone getting stung.  Who knows, maybe the wasps could not sting so soon after they hatched out of the nest.

This is what country memories are made of.