thenorphletpaperboy: A really different fishing trip

thenorphletpaperboy: A really different fishing trip:                  A REALLY DIFFERENT FISHING TRIP             When I was in high school, I hunted and fished every time I had a ...

A really different fishing trip

                 A REALLY DIFFERENT FISHING TRIP

            When I was in high school, I hunted and fished every time I had a chance. The summer after my Junior Year, my fishing partner and I had a fishing trip we still remember. It was to one of our favorite fishing places, Wildcat Lake. That was before the Corp raised the water level and the Wildcat Lake I once knew disappeared. My fishing partner that summer was Buddy Henley.  However, that trip really started with a trip to the City of El Dorado’s garbage dump. I know that sounds a little strange that a garbage dump would have anything to do with a fishing trip, and what on earth were two teen age boys doing at the City garbage dump?

            Well, that’s an easy answer. We were shooting rats. Okay, now before you really wonder why shooting rats could have anything to do with a fishing trip, let me explain. Back when I was in high school the City of El Dorado just dumped every imaginable thing that came out of a household into a massive pile of garbage. Just let your imagination run, and think of what it might contain and what it might attract. Birds flocked there during the day, and at after dark the night prowlers were everywhere. However, there were two critters that were more numerous than all the rest; rats and roaches. Yes, we were there to shoot rats as a sport. Big deal trophy hunters may go to Africa to shoot elephants, but country boys from Norphlet would go to the El Dorado Garbage Dump to shoot rats. Well, we did enjoy it. Of course, all those dead rats weren’t wasted, since possums, coons, and buzzards readily gobbled them up.

            But back to the fishing trip. While we were shooting rats, we talked about a fishing trip to Wildcat, and we had heard the old coot who had the boat rental had gone up 50 cents, which made the boat rental $2.00, and on top of that we needed gas money, and of course we had to buy crickets for bait. Well, my paper route paid $3.50 a week, but if I went to a movie or bought nearly anything else that $3.50 wouldn’t last the whole week. That’s when we started talking about ways to save money on the fishing trip, and since we were determined to fish in Wildcat Lake no matter what, it didn’t leave many items we could save on. I told Buddy we could save a dollar by digging worms out behind our barn, but we had tried that, and although we caught a few small bream, crickets were really the bait we needed to catch a decent mess of fish. That was when a roach ran up my foot and straight up under my jeans. Of course with thousands roaches everywhere, that wasn’t much of a deal. That’s when one of us said, and I can’t remember who, “What about using roaches instead of crickets for bait. We’d save a whole dollar.” Yeah, saving a dollar made even a dirty roach look interesting, but you just don’t say, “Okay, let’s grab up some.” Roaches the size of your thumb running through garbage really aren’t something you want to pick up, much less hold and put on a fish hook, but the more we talked about it the more we wanted to try and see if fish would bite roaches. That’s when we decided to try out roaches as fish bait, and after watching roaches by the hundreds cover up some stale, throwaway bread, we came up with a roach trap, which was just some light bread in a box, and the next night we put it out, and when we ran out of ammo shooting rats, we took the cricket box over and dumped all the roaches in the big box into the little cricket box. Wow, it was wall to wall big, brown roaches.

            Well, you just don’t drive up to Wildcat Lake and hop in a boat. Not hardly. You head down highway 82 toward Crossett and just before you get to the Ouachita River Bridge, you make a right turn down a dirt road that is usually just a string of mud holes. But we were ready for the mud holes. Earlier in the year my daddy had bought a four wheel drive Jeep with a wench on the front. We made it to the boat landing by only having to wench out of two mud holes, and then it was time to haggle with the old coot who owned the rental boats. Of course we wanted an aluminum boat, since we didn’t have a motor and would have to paddle, but he wanted three dollar for them, so we had to settle for one of his old beat up wooden boats, which came with a tin can to dip water. Yeah, it leaked, but not a lot, so we pushed off, and I sat in the back of the board and paddled with one hand and fished with the other. One of the reasons we really liked to fish Wildcat was that you could start fishing immediately and didn’t need a motor.

            We put the cricket box full of roaches on the seat between us, but reaching into a little box full of roaches took some getting used to. Of course, while you were grabbing a fat one to hook as bait, a couple of dozen would try to crawl up your arm. Well, I finally did get that first roach on my hook, and tossed my line, with a little lead shot and a very small cork, right beside a big cypress tree. As I watched that roach flutter as it went under, I wondered if we had made one really stupid mistake. But then “zip” my line and cork went under, and in a few seconds I had landed a huge bream. Wow, as Buddy pulled in another big bream, we knew those roaches were going to help us catch a lot of fish.

            From that moment on it only got better, and our ice chest was full of bream and bass in a couple of hours. After that first tentative roach grab, we didn’t think anything about grabbing up a roach, hooking it on, and getting roach gunk on our hand.

“Hey, Buddy; don’t pick your nose or lick your fingers.” I yelled as I laughed.

            It was a little before noon when we pulled up to the dock with our ice chest full of fish, and of course several guys were standing around.

            “Hey, boys. Y’all do any good? Didn’t seem to be bitin’ for us.”

            “Yes, sir. We did okay,” I said as I opened the ice chest full of fish.

            That brought about a half dozen men over, and as they looked at our ice chest full of fish, one of them asked, “what’d y’all use for bait?’

            “Roaches,” I said. I held up my cricket box, which still contained a lot of live roaches, and one men shook his head as he said, ‘“I don’t want to catch fish that bad.”

           

thenorphletpaperboy: Pluses and Minuses from 2019

thenorphletpaperboy: Pluses and Minuses from 2019:                                              Pluses and Minuses from 2019 Plus: The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Thanks to the vision...

Pluses and Minuses from 2019

                                             Pluses and Minuses from 2019

Plus: The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Thanks to the vision of our publisher, Walter Hussman, the new digital paper not only guarantees the paper’s future, but makes it a better paper with worldwide potential.

Minus: The Arkansas Highway Department’s failure to control roadside litter. When I was a Commissioner on the P. C. & E. Commission, we encouraged the State Highway Commission to make littering a $1000 fine and asked that a call number be placed on the signs. The Highway Department did and received hundreds of calls, but not one person ever paid the $1000 fine. (When I last checked, the calls were north of 600 without any fines.)

Plus: The Arkansas Highway Department: State Highway 167 from El Dorado to Little Rock is slowly becoming a four lane roadway…it’s about time.

Minus: The Arkansas Highway Department: State Highway 167 from El Dorado to Little Rock has mowed mediums without trees. “Hey guys, just quit moving the center ten yards of those mediums, and Mother Nature will do the rest.”

 Minus: The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission: Where are the missing quail? According to the Commission, they have just evaporated, but will return if their habit is improved…along with the Easter Bunny? Come on folks! If we restock quail in a perfect habitat, we are just feeding feral hogs, coons, possums, and fire ants. Restore our ecosystem with apex predators to control the out-of-control scavenger animals.

Plus: Arkansas’s Ecosystem: I have had reported probable sightings of three wolves in the Ozark-Buffalo River Area, and additional numerous cougar sighting. Note: all of the cougars are without collars; no escaped pets, as per the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. A North American Cougar expert contacted me and said the cougars are coming down the Arkansas River to our state because of the abundant of whitetail deer and feral hogs. As an additional benefit these apex predators will help control Deer Wasting Disease. Alaska has a huge population of deer, elk, and moose, but they don’t have DWD. Why? The numerous wolves, cougars, and grizzles in Alaska eliminate the sickly animals, and control the spread of the disease.

Plus: The U. S. Wildlife Service has recommend several locations in the Ozarks and Ouachita Mountains as prime areas to re-stock the red wolf. (Get your Bring Back the Wolf bumper sticker…250 are already on Arkie cars.)

Minus: The misguided folks who chop off their crepe myrtle trees. Crepe myrtles are trees not bushes and chopping them off will slowly kill them. And stop raking your yard leaves or you will starve it to death. Mulch the leaves, but rake the pine straw.

Plus: Governor Asa Hutchison: Praise the Lord! Our governor has seen the light, and the light is to turn off the lights of the hog farm on the Buffalo Nation River’s Watershed. Another plus is the Committee charged to protect the watershed from future hog farms.

Plus: Governor Asa Hutchison: Praise the Lord! Our governor has seen the light again, and placed a woman on the Game and Fish Commission.

Minus: Governor Asa Hutchison: The Highway Commission is still a male only board. “Come on Governor. Gals really do drive cars and trucks.”

Plus: U of A; The new Coach of the Hogs, Sam Pittman: He’s the coach we need, so get ready for some positive fall surprises. I’ve been a Hog Fan from as long as I can remember, and when Saint Frank finally turned the program around, he made me a believer that the Hogs could prevail over anyone. One day we’ll sit in the stands and watch our Hogs run up the score on Alabama.

Plus: The SEC; Alabama was beaten twice this year, so take hope. They aren’t invincible.

Minus: The U of A: The head football coach will make more money per year than the President of the University and the President of the United States combined.

Minus: The U of A still doesn’t have an Exhibit Hall for the 7,000,000 historical items stored in an Agri Building Warehouse, but they did scrape up enough cash, north of $150,000,000, to build some end zone seats, which have been turning up empty, and private fat-cat boxes.

 Plus: U of A’s Women’s Cross Country Team is number one in the nation, and Hog Basketball is on a rebound.

 Plus: A number of states and towns have started to ban Styrofoam, plastic straws, and plastic one use bags.



Minus: Arkansas isn’t one of them.



Plus: 50 more coal burning electrical generating plants have closed since Trump became President; including one of the largest “Big Brown” in Texas, and several coal companies have gone bankrupt. Thank you Mr. President!



Minus: None of them are in Arkansas.



Plus: Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old global warming activist from Sweden was named Time Magazine Person of the Year. She also won the #2019in5words Challenge. “Our house is on fire!”

Plus: Trump didn’t win either one.

Minus: The Sorry State of National Politics: Actually, the only bright spot I see is, I don’t think it can get any worse. Online posts make me want to throw up! And not because they are telling me about some horrible fact about certain political parties, it’s because of the out and out lies that flood the social media.

Plus: Mike Bloomberg for President: Yes, the former Republican, Independent, and now a Democrat seems to be the only person in the race who is actually qualified to be president.

Minus: Denying Global Warming: Science has just been tossed out the window, and politicians and individuals are lining up against or for global warming without even considering scientific studies. Australia has just recorded the hottest days ever recorded and Alaska has seen days of 40 below temps drop by double digits. It seem political dogma and greed are more important than our grandchildren’s future. How sad!  

Plus: The Economy and Stock Market: They are doing great! The Bureau of Labor Statistics says Trump has created 800,000 jobs and Obama 3,000,000 jobs. If the market keeps rising, I may be able to retire at 90.

Plus: Downtown El Dorado: When the new remodeling is finished, El Dorado will have 100% ground floor occupancy around its courthouse square, along with a majority of second floor space and basements occupied…and there is a list of tenants waiting for any retail space to become vacant. As added features: Goat Electric Scooters are on the streets, and there’s ice skating at MAD.

Minus: Downtown El Dorado: The Mayor is the Grinch Who Sold Christmas from our downtown retail stores and restaurants by firing and not replacing the downtown parking attendant.

Plus: Environmental grocery shopping: We went to Walmart, bought $72 worth of assorted groceries without using one plastic sack.

Minus: Non-environmental grocery shopping: Following us out the door was a lady with two buggies of groceries. There were so many plastic sacks that you couldn’t see anything she bought.

But don’t be depressed by looking back at 2019. I can see progress on a lot of the minus categories, and I believe our state will continue to improve in 2020. So hang in there and don’t give up hope.