Another Snippet

Lots of fishing stories I could tell.  First, I refuse to watch Hillbilly Hand Fishing.  This reality series takes noodlers, hand fishing experts, who skillfully catch catfish by hand, underwater, in the species’ hiding holes, fisher’s head under the water for several moments at a time, until said fish hooks on to the hand of the fisherman, and then wrestles large fish to the surface. Then these guides take group of virgin hand fishers into the river for a noodling experience. After a childhood spent trying not to get stung, bitten, eaten, or infected I simply don’t have the patience for people in muddy river water teaching someone who’s never even been in the country to stick their fingers, or worse in a hole on the banks of that river and wait for whatever might want to hook on to them to sink mouth, teeth, fangs, or jaws into the waiting appendage.   Not to mention drowning-the banks and bottoms of a river are unforgiving, an underwater jungle of twisting silt covered ooze that refuses to be gripped and secured for salvation.  And about the time you find that out-it’s too late.  OK, what brought that on? A childhood of being surprised at what one can pull out, run from, or fight off what comes from the South’s ponds, lakes, and rivers.  I have a healthy respect for that element of surprise.

1.   Caution should be maintained when reaching down to unhook a low hanging trotline hook.  (A trotline is a series of hooks on one line placed across the river set out baited and accessed by johnboat.) 

2.   A snapping turtle pulled from a trotline into your boat multiples in size and strength directly equal to length or lack of length of the boat in which you ride and how fast one of you can get to an oar.

3.  Water snakes will not swim away from you, they will stalk you.  I was stalked by a water moccasin once for about an hour.  It singled me out on the bank where I was sitting under a branch fishing and swam right for me.  I of course gave up my position and it swam around the area and went up in the branches a while before it returned to the water.  I then returned awhile later to a spot a little above the spot and here came the snake again.  This time I relieved myself to the low water bridge where my Father was fishing with a smile on his face.  Is he after you, Donna Kay, Daddy said?  I said it seemed like it to me.  We had a little laugh.  Then this snake comes swimming up the channel straight toward me.  He swims right up under where I’m standing and he reaches his neck out of the water about 4 inches high-I didn’t even know a snake could do that.  That snake neck and head started swaying back and forth.  Daddy said, Donna Kay, I think he’s trying to figure how to get up to you.  I picked up a rock and threw it at the snake hoping to scare it away and believe it or not I hit the thing right on the head and killed it-it went limp in the water belly side up.  We were stunned.  I threw as a big rock as I could throw on to it and it must have sunk it because we never saw it again.

More fish stories tomorrow-that one made me tired.