Minyard Conner told us, “I like to fish almost anywhere. I don’t like fishing in trout farms much. I’d rather fish after a trout where it’s raised out in the wild where you just have to outwit him to get him. If he sees the shadow of your pole, he’ll run. He knows something dangerous is on hand.”
CLEANING FISH
Leonard Jones explained, “It depends on what kind of fish you have as to how you clean it. If they’re small, take a trout for instance, I just scrape them good, take their innards out, and cut their heads and fins off.
“You have to skin a catfish. It ain’t got no scales on it. Cut it around the neck, split it down the back and stomach, and take a pair of pliers and pull that skin off. You can skin ’em just about as quick as you scrape ’em. If I catch a great big fish of any kind, I skin it. Small ones, I don’t.”
Minyard Conner told us, “To clean a speckled trout, just take a knife and split him open and take his guts out. Then he’s ready to cook.”
Buck Carver said, “The rainbow and the brown trout have scales, and you have to scrape them. Though the speckled trout has scales, they’re so fine you needn’t try to scale him. All you do is rub that slime off with some sand.”
COOKING OR PRESERVING FISH
Minyard Conner stated, “There are a lot of ways you can cook trout—bake ’em, fry ’em, or stew ’em. First, you cut their heads off and clean ’em. Now, these stockards [stocked fish], I’d stew ’em and take the bones out and make fish patties out of them because their meat’s too tender to hold together to fry.
“To bake a fish, you coat them with a little grease and lemon juice. Heat your oven to about 350 degrees and cook ’em about thirty minutes.”
Florence Brooks told us, “Mama used to fry fish for us for breakfast. Nowadays I usually give away what I catch, because we don’t eat fish. When I do cook them, I just roll the fish in cornmeal and a little salt and fry them in grease on the stove. Some people can’t eat fried fish, but my kids just like them fried brown. They eat them that way with hush puppies.”
Minyard Conner revealed, “I’ve eat fish eggs! I’ve caught a lot of big fish with big rolls of eggs under them. Boy, I like them! That’s caviar! That’s good!”
ILLUSTRATION 24 Blanche Harkins
Blanche Harkins stated, “Trout are easy to cook. I scrub them with a scrub pad or dishrag gourd to get the slime off. Then I cut their heads off and cut their stomachs open to take their innards out. Then I wash ’em again and roll them in cornmeal. I have a big black frying pan that I put Crisco in and get it hot enough to smoke. I turn the heat down some and brown them about ten minutes on either side, and they’re ready to eat.”
Jake Waldroop told us, “Before we had a freezer, we had some cool springs, and we would put any fish we weren’t going to cook right then in a bucket or half-gallon jars and stand them under those springs where the cold water would run over them. We could keep them for four or five days or more.”
Minyard Conner recalled, “Well, I was raised with the Indians. They wouldn’t do like the white man. You know, catch too many of anything and have to throw ’em away. They’d just catch what they could eat, and that’s all they took. If they could eat ten, then that’s all they took. They didn’t usually try to preserve them. They didn’t do a thing with ’em.”
“THE BIGGEST FISH I EVER CAUGHT”
Florence Brooks related, “The biggest fish I ever caught lacked one inch from being two feet long. It’s been ten or fifteen years ago, I guess, when we lived at Dillard. I caught a brown trout right about Betty’s Creek Bridge. It was as long as my arm and weighed four pounds and a half. I was using an ol’ cane pole, and my line had been on there no telling how long.
“They all took a fit when I caught that fish—thought somebody was a-drowning! I had it caught deep in its throat, and it couldn’t cut up a bit. I just drug it to the bank. Lawton [her husband] and Kent Shope got down in the water and lifted it up on the bank with their hands.”
Minyard Conner stated, “The biggest fish I ever caught was a twenty-four-inch rainbow over in Smokemont, in the Smokies [North Carolina]. I have fished all year long and maybe not caught one fish over a foot long. I seen one over there in the Smokies that was thirty-six and a half inches long that they’d caught in the Pigeon River.”
Talmadge York recollected, “I never had a really big fish that got away. One maybe twelve or fifteen inches long got off before I could get him out of the water. About the biggest fish I ever caught was a twenty-three-inch brown trout. I caught a blue cat one time that weighed nine pounds. I guess the biggest bass we ever caught was about a six-pounder.”
“I’VE HEARD, WHAT GROWS THE FASTEST OF ANYTHING IN THE WORLD IS A FISH AFTER IT’S CAUGHT ’TIL YOU TELL ABOUT IT.”
The first thing we thought about when we decided on an entire chapter dedicated to fishing were the stories fishermen are reputed to tell. The main focus of all our interviews was probably “Do you know any good fishing stories?”
Some of these are events that happened to people as they fished, or stories that had been told to them about people fishing, or stories they know about other fishermen. Some of the stories are exciting; some are funny; some are kind of hard to believe but are said to be true; and some are just informative.
Lawton Brooks told us, “I found this fish, oh, I guess four or five months ahead of the time I caught him. But I couldn’t get him to hit nothing. I tried everything. My wife’d catch lizards, and we’d try those. I didn’t tell nobody where I fished at. It was right down the railroad going by our house. The creek went right in beside the mountain there, hit a big rock, and turned back right under the rock there. It was right deep, and it was swift through there. It might be that when you put your bait in there, it went by too fast for him to catch it. He didn’t want to fool with it or something.
“I’d slip down there sometimes and see him out. I’d look over in there, and sometimes he’d be in a deep hole. I’d go to the house and tell Florence, my wife, ‘I’m gonna catch him.’
“So they started a revival meeting down there at the church below the house. One evening—it was the prettiest evening to fish—I went out there, and I fished and I fished, and fooled around and caught me a little ol’ crawdad. I cut his head off, hooked him on that hook, and had me a line—I mean a stout’un. I had me a big ol’ cane pole, long as from here to the door yonder, and I put that thing on that pole. I put me on a great big ol’ beaten-out piece of lead, and I rolled it around there.
“I throwed that line right on over in there with that crawdad, and I went on off to church. I put the pole up under a rock and stuck it in the bank. We come on back, and he’d bit my line. He was on there!
“I tell you what I done. I’d pull him out from under that rock, and he’d go back. And I’d get him back out, and he’d go back under. He’d swallowed the plug I had on the line way down. There wasn’t no way he could have got loose without he broke the line all the way because he’d done got it down past that tough place in his throat here. If it ever got below there, it’d pull his head off, and he’d still come out of there, or he’d come out dead. He ain’t gonna get that hook out. As long as you’ve just got him up here in the mouth, he can throw ’em out. But I know he swallowed that thing, for I had it hooked right through both his lips, and I knowed he’d have to swallow the whole hook, and sure ’nough, he had.
“I fooled with that ol’ rascal a long time, pulling him in and out. Thedro Wood come up. He had his arm broke, had it in a sling. He said, ‘What’s the matter here?’
“I said, ‘I’m trying to get this big fish outta here. I’ve got a big’un under here. You watch ’im in a minute.’
“Boy! I brought him out of there, and back he’d go. Thedro said, ‘Yea, God! What a fish!’ He said, ‘Next time bring him plumb on out in those bushes. Bring him out on this sandbar, and I’ll catch ’im.’
“I brought him out there, and he went back in. The next time I started with him, I just took
right on out through yonder just a-runnin’ with my pole, draggin’ him. Sure enough, he come out on the sandbar, and Thedro fell down on top of him. He said, ‘Come in here. I’ve got it. He’s under me here.’ Says, ‘Just reach under there and get it. He’s under there. I’m on top of it.’
“So I reached around under there, and I finally got to his head and got right up in his gills, and I said, ‘We got ’im now.’ I forgot how long he was, but boys, he was a whopping fish! And no telling how long he’d been in that creek. And everybody had fished by him. I’d been a-fishing by him for over a year before I ever knowed he was in there. Of course, I bet he’d laid right there in that same place.
“I had my pole back in under a bank, just as far back as I could drive it in the bank. I fixed it a purpose, so if he did get on there, I meant to have him. I got a line that I bet would have held fifty pounds and tied on that cane pole! And I wrapped the line way down the pole, so if he broke the end of the pole, I’d still have him down near to the bottom of it.”
Florence Brooks recalled, “I was fishing over there above Lake Burton, right down in the mouth of Timpson Creek. I put my plug out there, and I whipped one. I was bringing it in, and all at once, it got a whole lot heavier. I said, ‘My word, he must be an awful big one!’ He come out, and I saw that a bigger fish had the one I caught in his mouth. I had two hooks on my line, and the other fish was caught by that one. I come out with two of ’em.
“One time when I was fishing up yonder on Burton Lake on a bridge, I saw a pretty hole way up across there, and I just drew back and threw my hook under there. I hooked something, and it broke loose. Since Lawton was fishing above there, I just thought, ‘Doggone it, he’s caught my fish!’ And I swear, I liked to have caught a deer in the nose!
“It was in that water covered up, all but its nose sticking out. I thought it was a rock. When I got it in the nose, it jerked loose and got out of the water and left there. It’s the truth! It tickled Lawton to death. This was last summer. I knew it was a big one, but I wasn’t sure if it was a fish. I told Lawton that if I’d have got him good, he would have jerked me in! I don’t want to catch me another deer!”
Buck Carver explained, “If you ever slip up to a hole and hook a rainbow or a brown, either one, and hook him pretty hard, you might as well forget about that rascal if you lose him, because he ain’t gonna bite again that day.
“One time in my life I caught one over here in Kelly’s Creek. One of the biggest ones I’ve ever caught. It was about sixteen and a half inches long. It was awful broad.
“Anyhow, I was up on the side of the bank, and I dropped my hook in. It had a red worm on it. That fish hit the hook, and I got him about five foot out of the water, and he splashed off and went back in. The hook tore out. I went on up the creek. I was gone about two hours or two hours and a half. I didn’t think he’d bite again that quick, but he took it so fast when I dropped it in there the first time, I figured he must be pretty hungry. I come back down on the other side of the creek where I could get down in the water with that fish. That thing hooked up again. I scrambled around and let him wrestle around over that hole and finally got ’im out. He was about a pound, pound and a half, and there in the roof of his mouth was a big ’ol tore place where I’d hooked him the first time. That was the quickest I’ve ever got one of them durn things to bite again, and know it.”
Minyard Conner informed us, “I’ll tell you a fishing story that happened while I was fishing last summer. We was up yonder at the creek, and there was just so many people, I couldn’t get in. I had on a pair of wading boots, and they had just thrown a stockard in there about twenty inches long—one of them stripers. He was as long as your arm. He’d swim in there, back and forth, and everyone would throw their hook at him. Well, there wasn’t no place for me to stand, so I decided I would wade the river. There was laurel on the other side, and I went over there. That fish had come down and around over there, and everybody was throwing their hooks at him.
“I said to myself, ‘Directly, he’ll come up here, and I’ll snag him.’ He swam up that channel, and I saw him coming. I placed my hook in the water in that channel and gave it a yank and caught him on the right side of the head. He like to have jerked the pole out of my hand. He went round and round, and everyone pulled their hooks out of the water so I didn’t tangle him up with none of them. He just run everywhere, and I guess there must have been over a hundred people standing there fishing. After a while I slung him out and stuck my finger in his mouth and said, ‘Whoopee!’ And it was all over.”
Leonard Jones related, “I used to go fishing, and if I had any luck and come home, my wife, Ethel, would say, ‘Well, did you buy them?’ Well, one time I went and caught one or two cats, real good ones. They’s some fellow there that had four more real good ones. He said he’d take a dollar for ’em. I just give him a dollar and strung them up with mine. Ethel said, ‘Well, where’d you buy ’em at?’
“I said, ‘Every time I catch any you always accuse me of buyin’ them.’ I guess it was two or three years before I told her that I bought them. I wouldn’t tell her. That’s the only ones, though, that I have bought, but she always accused me, if I had good luck, of buying ’em.”
Melvin Taylor reminisced, “We were out in a boat. We were up early in the morning. We saw [a] fish, but there was something wrong with it. I thought at first he had a shad hung in his mouth, but I think his floater was busted. You know, when he runs, he bails that water and takes off. We’d come up on him, and when he saw the boat motor, he would go out of sight and come up way over on the other side of the lake. First thing we’d see was a break of water, so we’d crank up the boat and run on over there. We’d see him dig off again, so we had run him around the lake about thirty minutes or longer, and I told Wesley [my son] if we ever run him into shallow water, we might get him. So we went way on the other side of the lake, and we saw him jump. When we got back over there, he took off again.
“Wesley said, ‘Daddy, I’m glad it’s early in the morning. Ain’t nobody around. They’d think we were drunk or crazy one.’
“We went on over there and sure enough, he went in, broke water, and went out to shallow water. I told Wesley, ‘If we slip up behind him so he can’t see us, we might get him.’ So that time I saw him, his head was at the other direction. I told Wesley to get a net and both hands. ‘Boy! It’s a big one.’ I couldn’t see the fish. I was paddling and Wesley, he was a-looking. He was bent down, had the net in the water. About that time Wesley came falling over backwards in the boat with that fish in the net. Wesley told me, ‘He ran that way, and when he seen the shallow water, he whirled around and run right slap into the net, headfirst!’
“That’s how we caught that one. Wesley said, ‘How are we going to tell how we caught it, Daddy?’
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ll just have to tell the truth, son.’
“He said, ‘Ain’t nobody going to believe you.’
“And I said, ‘I know they’re not. We’ll have a lot of fun out of this.’
“So we fished around a while longer, but wasn’t doing no good. We went over to Jack Hunnicutt’s bait place about daylight or a little after, and there were four or five men buying bait. We came in, and they asked us what we caught him on. We told them we caught it on one of Jack Hunnicutt’s smiling night crawlers. They said, ‘Sure ’nough, how did you catch him? What kind of outfit did you have?’
“ ‘To tell the truth, we didn’t have him on no line. We just run him down and caught him in the landing net.’ Boy, they just punched one another and was laughing and going on, you know, and we come on and showed him around. We had more fun out of that, and they rode me and Wesley about that for two or three months. That’s the way we caught that fish.
“Everybody said, ‘Well, that’s not no fun to catch one like that.’
“And I told them, ‘I tell you what. You try running one down with a motorboat and catching him in a landing net. You’ll find out it’s a prett
y good sport.’
“That was really an experience. That one weighed eight pounds and ten ounces—that’s a nice one. You don’t get many that size in this country.”
I LLUSTRATION 25 Jake Waldroop
Jake Waldroop recalled, “Yeah, a fish has taken my hook off before. You just have to go out on the bank and tie you on another one and go right back after ’im.
“I was a-fishing up there on Kimsey Creek one time, and I had caught me a big brown trout. He was about sixteen inches long. I got him pulled out and put him on my string, then went on and throwed my bait in. I seen another coming at it, and he struck at the hook. I pulled, and I had him, and I said, ‘That’s the biggest fish I’ve ever caught in my life.’ He just took off right down the river with me, and I just had to let go. He got down in some muddy water, and there was a sandbar there. I finally got him out. I had caught him by his tail. He wasn’t as big as nothing, but he had more power to pull because of where he was caught. The hook had missed his mouth and caught in his tail. That hook is just as sharp as anything that can be made.
“We had a big fish on Kimsey Creek, a big old rainbow. We fished for that fish for three years and never could catch it. One time it rained all night, and the next morning, while we were getting breakfast, a big old crawfish came crawling out the camp door. Al jumped up and got him and put him in a box that we had. He said he was going up the creek and catch that big trout that morning. I had to round up the sows and feed them. While I was down there, I heard Al yell. You never heard such in your life! So I went back to the camp and he said, ‘He got away.’
“I said, ‘No, he didn’t. What’s that you’ve got covered up over there?’ He had him covered up in some leaves. He uncovered him and took him out, and he was twenty-one inches long.
Meats and Small Game: The Foxfire Americana Library (4) Page 6