Back Forty: Trotlines

My dad and all of his buddies are getting their boats fixed up for spring fishing. New batteries, checking out the motor and lining up all the Crappie poles, jigs, and rigs. Dad also has a wide assortment of bass fishing stuff as well, so it's kind of double duty preparations for him, bass and crappie.

My grandpa loved to fish as well. He worked for a lumber mill until he retired. I think for him, fishing sort of became his new job. I've never seen anyone work as hard at catching fish as he did. My grandpa's day would start about daylight. The first thing he did was run the lines. He would bring his fish back to his house and use the clothesline post or the Elm tree in the back yard to filet the fish. He caught so much fish he kept his freezer full, mom and dad's and Ray Heavener's full. After he got done skinning all the fish he was off to catch bait. Then it was back to the river to bait the trotlines, all this fishing made for a very long day. It seemed he would wear out a family member in a day or two, he didn't care, he just kept fishing.

At the beginning of spring he would sharpen all his trotline hooks, check his trotlines and prepare each item, even the rocks he used for weights had to be just right. He would usually set his lines above and below the pump station on the river. Claudie Clubb, the game warden often trotlined near my grandpa. Claudie's record Flathead catfish still stands to this day. He caught it just above my grandpa's line.

Everyday my grandpa caught perch for bait. He was allowed 100 hooks on his trotline, so each day he tried to catch a hundred perch. We caught perch in just about every creek. He would gripe at me if I didn't pay attention and set the hook before the perch swallowed it. If the perch swallowed the hook, it would die before it could be put on the trotline. He didn't always catch a hundred perch a day, but a lot of days he would. I've often wondered how many thousands of perch he caught over the years. Papa wanted live bait, mainly because he hated Channel catfish. Channels would eat dead bait, Flatheads wouldn't, I can still remember Papa turning the Channels back he caught, saying let someone else eat those yellow meated suckers. Channel catfish typically have a yellow ting to their meat, whereas Flatheads are white meat.

I was deathly scared of snakes when I was a kid. Papa would chain his boat up at the pump station and leave it there all of fishing season, it never failed every morning a cottonmouth would be under the boat in the mud. He always wanted to tie his trotlines to a nice, green limb, one that would bend and give a fishing pole does. He liked the limbs to give so a fish caught near the bank couldn't straighten the hook and get off so easy. This, "green limb theory" meant he usually tied off to a bush or a the top of a tree that had fallen into the river. I was always the one that had to get up in the front of the boat to grab the limb, and I hated it. Every time the snakes would slither off into the water. I used the boat paddle as a bat and would beat the dickens out of the snakes as Papa was driving the nose of the boat into the brush, he laughed every time. He wasn't afraid of anything I guess.

For all the snakes and hard work, I always loved running trotlines, one time we caught a soft shelled turtle, it's the only one I've ever caught. We caught several species of fish Drum, Carp, Crappie, Bass, Channels, Flatheads, Blues, running a trotline was sort of like opening a box of chocolates, you never knew what you would get. I'm hoping to get to spend some time on the river pretty soon, I can still smell the muddy water of the river. I hope they bite. I need a sign for my office- I'd rather be fishing.