Excerpt from Panic in Langley Bottom
...Well,
to get back to the Champagnolle Creek fishing trip… Heck, the creek had been
up, but the water was falling pretty good as the creek emptied into the
Ouachita River, and that—falling water—really sets the fish to biting. I
couldn’t wait to get my hook in the water. We rented an old wooden boat from
Mr. Joe Perry, who has a cabin and a little boat rental place at Cook’s
Landing, and paddled out into the middle of the creek. Shoot, in about 50 yards
we were weaving through the big cypress trees that are growing in the creek,
and it was time to start fishing. I flipped my cricket-bated hook out in a
good-looking spot right beside one of the big trees, and my cork zipped under
in about a second.
“Come outta there!” I yelled. I set
the hook and started to pull the fish in when I realized I didn’t have just a
big bream on the line.
“Hey, I got somethin’ pretty danged
big!” I yelled. Heck, I was fighting that fish like crazy, and, shoot, I
figured it was a bass that would weigh at least 3 pounds. Well, Daddy got the
dip net ready, and I pulled up as hard as I could, and then—“Dang! It’s a
worthless gar!” I yelled. A pretty big gar broke water, and then, before I
could do anything, the sorry fish wrapped my line around a cypress knee and
snapped it. That was one lousy way to start a fishing trip.
Alligator gars are what we call trash fish. You know, not
good to eat, and all they do is mess up a fishing trip ’cause they’re usually
big enough to where they’ll break your line.
Anyway, John Clayton kinda laughed and quipped, “That big
bass sure had a long nose. Ha, ha.” Yeah, a gar is built like one of them
torpedoes the navy uses, and their mouth is a long, pointed snout with some
really sharp teeth, and I know how sharp ’cause last year I manage to land
about a 3-pounder, and when I tried to unhook the sorry fish, it crunched down
on my little finger. I still have a scar where that danged fish bit me. (I once
had a college teacher tell me that an Alligator Gar is kinda like a living
fossil. You know like one of them fish you seen in a museum that are in a rock.).....
