Lockhart: Papa loved fishing as much as eating catfish

My grandpa loved catfish. I think he liked to eat catfish better than deer meat.

Every spring he would bring a five gallon bucket into the living room and sharpen big stainless steel hooks on a whet rock. We always called it a whitrock, the stone that we used to sharpen our pocketknives on. He would have the tips of those hooks razor sharp so a big flathead would stay hooked.

Every spring, he had a routine of sharpening the hooks, checking his line and making drops for the hooks and rocks that weighted the line and kept it on the bottom of the river.

When the spring rains made the river come up just a little, he would hurry and “set” a couple of trotlines. Once they were set he would catch perch all day long to bait the trotline with. He would catch a hundred perch a day for bait.

I liked catching perch. They will bite about anything and they’re fun to fight with the little Zebco 303 I had.

Papa had a big trash can with an aerator rigged up to keep the perch alive. We would go to the river each evening and bait the lines with fresh perch.

At daylight, the next morning we would run the lines. This is the part I didn’t like. Papa always looked for a tree limb that would bend to tie the trotline too. So, if a fish got caught close to where the line was tied off the line would have some give, just like a fishing pole bends when a fish pulls on it.

Each morning my job was to sit in the front of the boat and grab the line, I hated it with a passion. The reason I hated it was because Papa would try to run the nose of the boat as far up in the tree as he could.

Almost every morning there would be at least one big cotton mouth water moccasin laying up in those trees where the trotline was tied off. I’d have the boat paddle ready to whack them out of the tree. Papa would sit in the back of the boat and roar with laughter. I think he liked doing it to me about as much as I hated it. However he got kind of aggravated when I broke the boat paddle after one struck at me. I whacked it clean off the tree limb up on the bank.

We pulled in several big catfish over the years. I think Papa’s biggest catfish was an eighty pound flathead. The state record flathead came from the same hole of water that he fished, it was over a hundred pounds.

Papa didn’t like eating channel cats, he always called them those yellow meated suckers. He would throw them back. I saw him throw back several that were over twenty pounds. He would only eat flathead and crappie. Sometimes he would crappie fish if he had already caught enough perch.

Papa died in 2003. I inherited his trotlines and tackle boxes.

The dogwoods, sumac and several others have been in bloom here lately. The rivers up and running pretty good. I’ve looked at the five gallon buckets of trotlines in the back of my shop several times this past week.

Each time when I cast a glaze at them I could hear my grandpa laughing at me as the snakes hit the water. It’s funny the things we remember from our childhood. I sure do miss him.