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.”
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