Drive - A Memoir 71th Installment
could
bring the bait right to the snout of the big sucker fish.
“These
buggers must be vegetarians; maybe we should try some lettuce or a
carrot for bait,” I laughed.
“Not
a bad idea,” Russ said, “the carrot I mean.”
“I
was only joking, fool,” I replied, but in a comical voice.
Russ
was fiddling through our tackle box and came up with a large treble
hook. “Okay watch this,” he said, as he tore a little piece of
fabric off the bottom of his white tee shirt and threaded the hook
through the cloth. He snelled the hook on a heavy length of 30 pound
fishing leader and lowered it to the bottom. We could clearly see the
white spot on the bottom. We waited, and soon the suckers started
floating by. When one had passed over the white marker, Russ jerked
the line and the big treble hook snagged the sucker fish near the
tail. The fight was on. When you hook one of these fish in the mouth
they don’t fight much. However, when you hook one of these suckers
by the tail, they have the advantage, and you have a good fight to
get them to the surface. The cheap fishing rod that we had was not up
to the task of reeling in very big fish. I was trying to help land
this big sucker and I grabbed the line. The line is small and slick
so I quickly wrapped the line around my fingers so I could pull
without slipping. Big mistake. The line tightened around my fingers
causing a great deal of pain but didn’t draw blood. I shook loose
noticing Russ snickering at me and with the next pull I wrapped the
line around my shirt cuff at my wrist which worked well and we
dragged the fish on the bank. We caught several more using this
method. Occasionally the thirty pound line would snap, and we’d
lose our treble hook, which were always in short supply, and we’d
have to use a regular single hook which wouldn’t work nearly as
well. Soon we were out of big treble hooks and it would be a while if
ever before we could get more. We went home.
We
asked Vernon if he had any more big treble hooks, but he didn’t, so
this was the inspiration for our harpoon. We had a fifteen foot
bamboo pole we sometimes used for a flag pole, and we attached a
barbed point to the end of it. The barb was made from a ¾ in. wide
by 1/8 inch thick by one foot long flat iron. We cut the end to a
point by sawing the end off at a 45 degree angle. Then, we cut a ½
inch slot in the edge and pried the cut open to create a barb. We
used a file to sharpen the point and the barb we created.
After
all our labors, we
500 more words tomorrow
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